2024 Dao Prize for Excellence in Multimedia Journalism

Sharon Grigsby won the 2024 Best Multimedia Reporting Dao Prize with Claire Ballor, Maggie Prosser, and Tom Fox for The Dallas Morning News for 30 days’ worth of stories exposing the full scope and reality of the fentanyl epidemic gripping north Texas. They received $10,000 for their reporting.

As the DMN City Columnist and a fifth-generation Texan, Sharon is focused on all things Dallas.

Sharon made what she expected to be a short career stopover here in 1980 and is still working to make Dallas a better city for all its residents.

She also writes about mental health care and substance abuse issues.

Here are some of their reports on the fentanyl epidemic:

Tears and heartache in Denton’s 158th District Court, Claire Ballor and Tom Fox, September 18, 2023

Code Two: Inside the fentanyl fight at one North Texas school, Maggie Prosser, September 14, 2023

Fentanyl’s blessing and ruin: Inside a 12-hour shift at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital, Sharon Grigsby, Claire Ballor, Tom Fox, and Juan Figueroa, September 25, 2023

The pull of fentanyl was stronger than everything else, until the baby came, Claire Ballor and Tom Fox, September 30, 2023

‘Something of hers’: North Texas mom copes with grief after daughter’s fentanyl poisoning, Maggie Prosser and Tom Fox, September 29, 2023