The Denver Post's marijuana coverage in The Cannabist website and a three-part series on the use of cannabis extract cannabidiol earned top honors from the Online News Association in the category of topical reporting by a large news organization. (Joe Amon, Denver Post file)

Denver Post, Cannabist win national award for marijuana journalism

The Denver Post has won a prestigious national digital journalism award for its coverage of the legalization of marijuana in 2014.

The Online News Association awarded The Post the top prize for topical reporting among large news organizations Saturday at its 15th annual conference in Los Angeles.

The Post’s entry included a three-part series focused on 12-year-old Preston Watson and his mother, Ana, who left North Carolina for Colorado in the hopes of helping the boy’s debilitating seizures with CBD, an oil extract of marijuana. The entry also included The Cannabist, the website that covers cannabis news and culture.

Finalists in the category included NPR, National Geographic and the Los Angeles Times.

The Post was last a finalist at ONA in 2010 in the multimedia feature presentation category for medium sites for its American Soldier project, which chronicled American soldier Ian Fisher’s journey from enlistment to war and back. That project was awarded the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in feature photography.

In 2004, The Post was a finalist for its “Betrayal in the Ranks” project in the enterprise journalism category for large outlets.

This story was first published on DenverPost.com