The Humboldt Journalism Project recently named two first place winners for this year’s 40th Award, including North Coast Journal News Editor Thadeus Greenson for his series of articles on the controversy surrounding Eureka City Schools’ now-defunct deal with a mystery developer for the purchase of the former Jacobs Middle School and a Eureka ballot measure seeking to block affordable housing projects.

“His coverage, published in the face of a threatening letter from the school district’s attorney, shed light on the players behind a land deal that was intertwined with Eureka’s Measure F,” a press release says. “That ballot measure, which failed in November, would have limited Eureka’s affordable housing plans and protected parking lots instead.”

Also honored was Isabella Vanderheiden of the Lost Coast Outpost for her work, “There a Ticking Time Bomb in the Heart of Orick, and It’s Not Clear Whether Anybody Can Do Anything About It,” which the release describes as examining the “complex issues of flood safety, river ecology, levee maintenance and much more, describing multi-layered conflicts in efforts to protect the struggling community of Orick.”

The award, which comes with a $1,500 prize for each of this year’s winners, “is named to underscore its mission of honoring in-depth journalism relevant to those whose income puts them in the lower 40 percent economically in Humboldt County,” according to the release, which also notes this is the fourth and final year the award.

“These articles exemplify what can be done at the local level to ensure government accountability and transparency,” contest judge Ricardo Sandoval Palos, the PBS public editor and a graduate of Cal Poly Humboldt, said in the release. “These aren’t outlets with large staffs and big investigative budgets, but as intrepid journalists who know their communities, they have thoroughly explored some pretty serious issues.”

Past 40th Award winners include Journal freelancer Linda Stansberry for “Profit and Pain,” which detailed a local nursing home chain’s pattern of putting profits over people, while Greenson also took second place last year his story “The Soeth Files,” which detailed a local sheriff’s deputy’s questionable uses of force without accountability.

The Journal‘s coverage of Eureka City Schools’ defunct Jacobs deal and Measure F was also cited by the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California, which recently named the paper a winner…