"24 Hours in the Champagne Room"

STORYTELLING CATEGORY — SHOWCASE Certificate of merit

Houston Chronicle
Contributors: Sarah Smith, Elizabeth Conley
06/17/2023

Chronicle features writer Sarah Smith launches her reporting process with a pressing topic, often culled from breathless headlines or from the edges of political talking points. Her curiosity — and unmatched ability to challenge our assumptions about a subject — drives her newsgathering.

In 2023, she set out to understand how long COVID constricts daily life.

 For this story, Smith asked the subject, ER nurse Christine Coglaiti, to share the most vulnerable details about her health and finances. Smith had to be in her bedroom, her pocketbook, her doctor’s office. Smith also asked Christine to send her voice memos as an audio diary she could send when her energy spiked.

Christine’s long COVID battle also yielded reporting challenges.

Smith and visual journalist Elizabeth Conley understood they had to be available when Christine’s illness subsided, which could happen suddenly and always unexpectedly.

The journalists’ flexibility eased the chaos. Christine’s memory also falters. Details disappeared. But because Christine trusted Smith, she offered documentation to support her recollections. She introduced Smith to loved ones who could confirm her account.

With “24 Hours in the Champagne Room,” Smith commits to the second-person, a rare newspaper style, to crystalize her immersive reporting. Her writing recreates a dizzying and devastating world.

Christine struggles with brain fog, which interrupts speech and thought patterns. Smith mimics this in the writing, eschewing tradition for extreme accuracy. Smith reported the story for months, but it reads as a singular day populated with vivid details selected for their potential as both fact and symbol. Each 24-hour cycle for Christine, after all, is not a new day but a closed, claustrophobic loop.

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Submitted by Robert Eckhart.