“ The last thing they wanted ,” a story published by The Oregonian/OregonLive in June 2024, has been recognized as one of the year’s best pieces of narrative journalism nationwide.

Tom Hallman and Douglas Perry reported and wrote the story of Petra and Michael Mathers, a prominent Astoria couple who died by suicide, and the questions their deaths left behind for friends and family. It won first-place honors in the Best American Newspaper Narratives awards, which is sponsored by the Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas.

“The story makes eloquent use of interviews and the subjects’ own letters to reconstruct the life and double suicide death of a beloved and richly accomplished couple in a small town,” judges for the contest wrote.

Hallman, who won the Pulitzer

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