The Fresno Bee wins 4 Gruner awards for public service, commentary & photography
The Fresno Bee took home top prizes in four categories at the 38th Gruner journalism awards on Thursday, an annual competition and ceremony at Fresno State honoring the best journalism in the Central Valley.
For the second straight year, The Bee won the top prize in the Public Service category, this time for stories about the unfolding immigration crackdown last year, with several investigative pieces focused on the potentially illegal and chaotic opening of a privately owned detention facility in Kern County.
The team of four Bee reporters included Erik Galicia, Melissa Montalvo, Maria G. Ortiz-Briones and Marina Pena. Montalvo won the Public Service award last year for her 2024 stories about worker deaths at facilities owned by Sanger-based Pitman Family Farms, maker of Mary’s Chicken brand poultry.
Judge Jim Newton, a UCLA instructor and former Los Angeles Times editor, called the immigration topic “the year’s most important and timely issue” and praised The Bee’s coverage as deeply and deftly reported, according to a news release from Fresno State about the awards.
The Fresno Bee has published more than a hundred stories about the immigration crackdown and its toll on families and Central Valley life. We chose to highlight these seven below for the contest judges to consider:
- Why is Border Patrol so far inland for Central California arrests? Here’s its jurisdiction
- Trump executive orders leaves over 100 refugees in Fresno without aid. How you can help
- WATCH: How hard is it to immigrate to the United States? Watch our online Q&A
- California ICE detention facility fills up with people who have no criminal history
- California’s largest ICE detention facility has 500 detainees. ‘It’s total chaos’
- ICE arrests in Fresno area surge amid Trump crackdown. Here’s where they’re happening
- Man detained at CA’s largest ICE facility alleges ‘horrible negligence’ after injury
Other Fresno Bee winners
Best commentary, large dailies: Juan Esparza Loera, recently retired Fresno Bee Opinion Editor, won first place for his column about the deafening silence from California leaders as the U.S. Border Patrol conducted a sweep looking for undocumented immigrants in January 2025, just days before President Trump took office. His critical piece provided an unsettling preview of what was to come.
FULL STORY: California leaders are inexcusably silent as Border Patrol sweeps Central Valley | Opinion
Best news photo, large dailies: Craig Kohlruss, a Fresno Bee photographer, won first place for a breathtaking shot of new citizens being sworn in against the backdrop of Yosemite’s soaring Half Dome. A judge wrote, “Beautiful use of the environment to tell the story of what the ceremony was about. It’s often challenging to get a dynamic photo from a ceremony, but this image certainly did,” according to the press release. Kohlruss also won last year in this category.
Best sports photo, large dailies: Eric Zamora, a Fresno Bee photographer, won for a shot that perfectly captures a Clovis High football player leaping gracefully over a would-be tackler. “No caption needed,” one judge wrote, according to the news release.
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Fresnoland, a local nonprofit, shared top honors with The Bee in the Public Service category for reporter Gregory Weaver’s look at abuses of the state Williamson Act, which provides property tax breaks for certain owners of farmland threatened by development, the news release said.
The Gruner Awards honor George F. Gruner, who retired as executive editor in 1988 after 33 years at The Fresno Bee. The McClatchy Co., publisher of The Bee, established the awards in 1989. The Department of Media, Communications and Journalism at Fresno State independently administers the awards. Entries are judged by professional journalists from outside the contest area.
This story was originally published May 1, 2026 at 4:34 PM.
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