Greenville News wins February Sidney Award for revealing the heavy cost of gentrification

A collection of articles about gentrification that ran in The Greenville News has won the February Sidney Award. The Sidney, named for renowned labor leader Sidney Hillman, is a monthly award for outstanding investigative journalism that exposes social and economic injustices.

“The Cost of Unity” trains a lens on how a massive revitalization project, Unity Park in Greenville, South Carolina, could lead to consequences for residents in the vicinity. Rising real estate and rent prices near the park have made living in the area unaffordable for many. The News’ partnership with Furman was born out of a connection between Furman’s Ken Kolb, chair and professor of sociology, and Fred Clasen-Kelly, then regional investigative reporter for USA TODAY Network-Southeast who worked on a project about redlining and Section 8 housing failures.

For the team’s latest project in “The Cost of Unity,” The Greenville News relied on census data crunched and analyzed by Furman University researchers at The Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities – “Racial Displacement in Greenville, SC.”

In an email to The Sidney Hillman Foundation, Greenville News journalist Carol Motsinger wrote, “We leveraged both of our institutional expertise [USA Today Network and Furman University]. Furman provided sophisticated data analysis and mapping, while we focused on investigating how we got [to a place of racial displacement], as well as connecting with powerful community voices and experiences that demonstrate to our readers what is at stake.

“The Furman findings helped us refine our investigation. We also asked them to help us research the areas we decided to focus on after connecting with people impacted by displacement. For instance, they provided a more in-depth analysis of the one-mile radius around Unity Park after we discovered the majority of our sources had a connection to that geographic area.”