The Miami Herald and WLRN News has jointly won the prestigious Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Sigma Delta Chi Award for Non-Deadline Reporting.
The newsrooms this week secured the top honor for their year-long investigative series, "Killer Train," which exposed systemic safety failures and a staggering death toll along Florida’s Brightline higher-speed rail corridor. The award recognizes outstanding work published or broadcast in 2025.
The "Killer Train" project shattered the widely accepted public narrative surrounding the privately operated passenger rail system.
Through an original, exhaustive analysis of federal railroad data, autopsy reports, and police files, the Miami Herald and WLRN team revealed that Brightline was the deadliest major passenger train in the United States, averaging one death every 13 days of service.
Among the project's most significant findings:
- The Reality of the Fatalities: The investigation disproved the company’s assertion that the overwhelming majority of track deaths were unpreventable suicides, showing instead that many were preventable accidents caused by flawed or missing infrastructure.
- The Taxpayer Cost: Despite promoting itself as a purely privately funded venture, the journalists discovered that nearly $500 million in public taxpayer dollars had been funneled toward the rail line, even as critical safety installations faced multi-year delays.
The deep-dive investigation had immediate national impact. Following its release, federal officials committed to addressing the safety gaps along the South Florida corridor.
The SPJ award was among several national awards garnered by the Brightline project.
The series was among four finalists for the Pulitzer Prize under Local Reporting — the only public radio station to be named to the most coveted prize in journalism. And it has won a national award from Investigative Reporters & Editors, the nation’s most prominent investigative journalism organization.
It also won a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award, among the most prestigious in broadcast and digital news.
The Sigma Delta Chi Awards, which trace their roots back to 1932, recognize the highest tiers of journalism across print, radio, television, and online categories. The honors originally began as the Distinguished Service Awards in 1939 before later adopting their current name.
The presenting organization, the Society of Professional Journalists, was founded in 1909 and remains one of the oldest organizations representing journalists in the United States. SPJ focuses on promoting the free flow of information, educating future generations of reporters, and defending First Amendment protections.
A list of the 2025 Sigma Delta Chi Award recipients can be found on the Society of Professional Journalists' website.
