04/18/2024
The Syracuse Press Club is thrilled to announce the winner of our prestigious 2024 Bill Carey Award for Journalist of the Year.
For this award, the club annually recognizes one journalist who stands out among peers for contributions to news coverage in a 12-month period (2023).
Congratulations to Glenn Coin, our 2024 Journalist of the Year! Glenn is the weather, environment and science reporter for syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. He also covers Micron Technology’s plans to build a $100 billion chip plant in Central New York.
He has a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Michigan State University and two master’s degrees from Syracuse University, in newspapers and public administration. He taught journalism for more than 20 years at several Central New York colleges.
John Lammers, syracuse.com’s senior director of content, wrote this about Glenn:
“Glenn Coin has built a remarkable reputation in Syracuse: He’s the reporter who figures out important, complex things and explains them in clear and delightful ways.
A scientist by schooling, he has been the go-to expert on Covid, lake effect snow, climate change, public health, air and water pollution, sewers and water service, trash, the heavens, oddball critters and any number of unexplained natural phenomena.
It’s always: Glenn, what’s going on here?
He was born for this moment in Syracuse. Glenn leads the Syracuse.com and The Post-Standard’s coverage of Micron Technology’s planned construction of a massive chip-making factory here. It represents a once-in-multiple-generations opportunity and challenge for Central New York. It is important and complex. And in 2023, Glenn owned the Micron coverage, breaking news and breaking down the science of this project.
He plowed through a nearly 400-page document to find this surprise: the plant’s likely water and power needs were vastly greater than earlier estimates. That dominated the local discussion for months. He profiled the amazing history of Micron and the mercurial nature of the global chip business. He fact-checked the job estimates promised by government and the company, and he found that the claims were overstated. He broke the news that a Dutch company, a high-flying international giant, was a major partner joining the local Micron plan.
These scoops and others focused the debate here in the first full year of planning for this transformational project. Glenn would publish a story and it would be discussed in public meetings that same day.
Unlike any other reporter in town, his competition on this national story is not in this area code. Glenn is fighting for Micron stories with business reporters from Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. What’s revealing: publications around the nation have done “Micron in Syracuse” stories and they all read like they have a Syracuse.com subscription.
Even with all that, my favorite story of Glenn’s this year was completely different. He told the stirring tale of the birth of twin elephants at our zoo. It was surprising, dramatic and highly unusual. Glenn’s story, beautifully told, puts you in the room, with all the tension. https://www.syracuse.com/news/2023/02/inside-the-syracuse-zoos-scramble-to-save-a-newborn-elephant-twin-hes-not-responding.html
This vast range of engaging work in this key year in Syracuse shows what a treasure Glenn is.”
Congratulations Glenn, we look forward to honoring your incredible year of journalism at the SPC Awards on Saturday, May 4, 2024! https://syracusepressclub.org/news/glenn-coin-of-syracuse-com-named-2024-journalist-of-the-year/
The prestigious Bill Carey Journalist of the Year Award is named after longtime Syracuse broadcaster Bill Carey. In a career that spanned more than 40 years, Bill was involved with covering virtually every major story in greater Syracuse since the 1970s. He finished his career as a senior reporter with Time Warner Cable News (now known as Spectrum News 1). He was known as a skilled writer, a disciplined editor and a beloved mentor and guiding light to many young journalists. Bill died in 2015 and is missed by many.
Everyone, banquet seats are filling up fast. This was a highly competitive year, and we are capping attendance at 200 guests. Buy your tickets and tables before Monday, April 22! https://syracusepressclub.org/dinner-tickets/