The Markup’s investigative series on internet disparities, “Still Loading,” has won the Scripps Howard Excellence in Innovation award.
“The Markup story was an innovative project from start to finish,” the announcement said. “The final product illuminated the effects of systemic racism and ultimately will have a wide-ranging impact.”
Our investigation found that four internet service providers—AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink—disproportionately offered lower-income, least-White, and historically redlined neighborhoods slow internet service for the same price as for speedy connections in other parts of town. The Markup was the first to show where inequitable effects of tier flattening (charging internet customers the same rate for differing levels of service) have occurred, and we published multiple resources that allow anyone to look into internet disparities in their own area.
The Markup has continued to cover the disparate impact created by tier flattening in 2023, and has created more resources for anyone to look into internet price and speed disparities in their neighborhood, along with a guide for how you can report discrepancies between what an internet company advertised to the public and what it reported to the Federal Communications Commission.
Resources for the public
- Guide: How to Search for a Better Deal on Broadband
- Guide: Slow Internet? Find Out What Side of the Digital Divide You’re On
- Interactive Map: See the Neighborhoods Internet Providers Excluded from Fast Internet
Our original series
- Original Investigation: Dollars to Megabits, You May Be Paying 400 Times As Much As Your Neighbor for Internet Service
- Show Your Work: How We Uncovered Disparities in Internet Deals
- Story Recipe: Journalists: Investigate Which Neighborhoods in Your City Are Offered the Worst Internet Deals
You can read our entire Still Loading series here.
Congratulations to the team for the recognition of their hard work across our original investigation and entire series. Congratulations, too, to all of this year’s Scripps Howard Award winners.
