The Lens is proud to be a finalist in eight categories for the 2014 Press Club of New Orleans awards, including best news site, investigative writing and continuing coverage.

In addition, The Lens’ Bob Marshall and WWNO’s Fred Kasten are finalists for “Last Call,” their radio series on the disappearing coast.

Last year we took home three first-place prizes, including best news site for the second year in a row.

This year’s list of finalists shows the range of our coverage: New Orleans flood protection, downtown redevelopment, lethal injection, standardized-test cheating. And it shows how we do our work differently: deep-dive stories, live blogs and live chats, documents and analysis.

The awards recognize work done in 2013.

With a small staff, we know we can’t cover everything. But we commit to covering certain stories fully — and we put links to our ongoing stories at the top of every page. So I’m glad that we locked up the “continuing coverage” category this year:

We’re a finalist in the “partnership” category for our text and radio stories about the high cost and complications of busing students in New Orleans. Those stories were spearheaded by two of our freelancers, Marta Jewson and Della Hasselle. Janaya Williams, our audio producer, helped bring the story to life on WWNO-FM.

Lens freelancers are well represented on the list. Included in our package about New Orleans flood protection were stories by Loyola University student Sarah Drew and Kari Dequine Harden, in addition to staff writer Bob Marshall. Those stories are a finalist for science and technology writing.

And Hasselle started to cover the controversy over Louisiana’s lethal injection practices well before it was a national story. By then, she had become an expert on the subject.

Other Lens work up for an award:

We congratulate all our colleagues for their excellent work — particularly those at The New Orleans Advocate, Fox 8 News and WWNO, who have taken a special interest in our public-service journalism.

The full list of finalists is at the Press Club of New Orleans’ site.

Steve Myers was editor of The Lens. Before joining the staff in 2012, Myers was managing editor of Poynter Online, the preeminent source of news and training about the journalism industry. At Poynter,...