The last year has been nothing but a transitional milestone year for the Argus Leader. And as we head into 2024, I can’t help but look back at the impact we’ve made during my first year as news director of this great 100-plus-year-old institution.

This week, our corporate company Gannett issued its annual impact report, highlighting journalism across the nation that helped elevate the voices of the voiceless, change law and hold powerful people to account.

Those efforts have also remained a consistent focus for us through 2023.

Yes, we’re smaller in size than we were in 2022. Yes, we’ve recently moved locations. And yes, we have faced numerous resource challenges in the last 365 days, but what holds steady is a mighty resiliency and dedication from Argus Leader journalists who live locally to cover residents in Sioux Falls and the two counties this booming city sits between.

And we couldn’t have thrived among such challenges without your loyal readership and investment every step of the way.

That said, here’s a look back at some of the momentous ways Argus Leader journalism made a difference in 2023.

We took on South Dakota’s most influential man in court, and won

In April, the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled unanimously that search warrant affidavits related to a child pornography investigation concerning billionaire banker and philanthropist T. Denny Sanford must be unsealed.

The decision came after a nearly two-year legal battle between Sanford, the Argus Leader and ProPublica, a national investigative nonprofit news source, to gain access to the documents.

More: What happened during the child porn investigation tied to T. Denny Sanford in South Dakota

The Court’s decision not only reaffirmed the role journalism has in accountability, it also protected the public’s right to know, to scrutinize and to understand government, public figure and law enforcement decisions.

Jennifer Nelson, a senior staff attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal services for reporters, said any time a court rules that information must be public, it builds trust.

“Any time if you’re thinking about things happening in secret behind closed doors, that’s where abuses could occur,” she told the Argus Leader in April. “Public oversight of the judicial system is just incredibly important.”

Once those documents were unsealed, we learned the investigation was directly tied to an image found at Sanford’s California home.

More: New T. Denny Sanford affidavits tie child pornography image to California home

He has not been arrested or charged. The South Dakota Attorney General’s Office closed the investigation in May 2022, concluding there were “no prosecutable offenses within the jurisdiction of the state of South Dakota.” It remains unclear if other investigations exist within other jurisdictions because the case eventually spanned into other states, including Arizona, California, Nebraska and Colorado.

Project documenting Native American overrepresentation in SD’s foster care system inspires lawmakers

In our first heavy-lift collaboration with one of our newest content partners, reporters with the Argus Leader and South Dakota Searchlight spent six months and hundreds of hours traveling across the state to find out why Native American foster children continue to suffer the cyclical effects of a broken welfare system decades after the 1978 federal Indian Child Welfare Act.

The act mandated the best interest of the child be prioritized, including keeping the child near the family and culture and prioritizing family reunification.

More: The Lost Children: An Argus Leader/South Dakota Searchlight investigation into ICWA in SD

But Native American children accounted for nearly 74% of the foster care system at the end of fiscal year 2023 — despite accounting for only 13% of the state’s overall child population.  South Dakota as a whole has one of the highest rates of Native American child removals across the United States.

That recent 10-part series, called “The Lost Children,” not only highlighted solutions to the statewide issue, it has since led to multiple legislators reaching out about drafting legislation to codify portions of the federal law into state law and adding more support for kinship and foster families.

More: How we reported The Lost Children series

The fight for SD’s hottest commodity − land

We have led the way in reporting about efforts by two carbon pipeline companies, Summit Carbon Solutions and Navigator CO2 Ventures, attempting to carve out a multi-state, multi-billion operation for carbon capture, in an effort deemed the new gold rush of the Midwest by proponents and opponents alike.

More: Farmers say Summit Carbon Solutions using ‘intimidation’ while targeting McPherson County land

That reporting has included uncovering how such companies were using what farmers called intimidation tactics, bringing security convoys during land surveys to sway landowners and taking dozens of residents to court to gain land access for the potential pipeline’s construction.

More: ‘Killing the first person I see’: Brown County farmer allegedly threatens Summit surveyors

The awareness contributed to landowners reacting with protests, calling for a special legislative session, building more organized grassroots efforts to push against the companies and demanding Gov. Kristi Noem choose a side in the fight.

As of today, both companies have been denied permits in South Dakota. Navigator has since axed its pipeline altogether, while Summit awaits the state Supreme Court to rule on its request the Court throw out all or at least part of an appealed survey access order based on alleged procedural errors within the appeal’s filing.

More: Why has South Dakota become a battleground for the future of carbon? Here’s what Summit said

How ‘a decade of hate’ marginalized SD’s LGBT community

And in a six-part series, we captured the 10-year trend of how legislative decisions based in dangerous rhetoric in both drafted and passed bills targeting the LGBTQ+ and Two Spirit community affected their ability to:

More: A decade of hate: How anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has shaped legislation in Pierre

It’s not an exhaustive list, but the trend the series highlights sparked statewide conversations about safety, advocacy and inclusion, as well as what’s at stake when it comes to the human rights of our LGBTQ community.

More: What would make South Dakota safer for the LGBTQ+ community? Not just policies alone.

It also inspired at least one lawmaker to say she would bring back another attempt to align state law with federal when it comes to South Dakota’s definition of marriage by adjusting language to say marriage is between two people and not only “between a man and a woman,” as it currently stands in state law.

Other moments of gravity:

• Our recent reporting about the Sioux Falls School District gutting its gymnastics program, and the Title IX lawsuit that has since followed, led national lawyers fighting against government overreach and for Title IX reform to recently join that lawsuit because of the district’s lack of transparency about its decision to also cap boy’s athletic participation amid the litigation fallout.

• Our coverage about how Sioux Falls city administration handled the Delbridge Museum when high arsenic levels were found on its taxidermized animal displays, as well as our ability to highlight frustrations about the administration’s decision to gut a community-driven sustainability plan contributed to Sioux Falls city officials revisiting both topics as a whole through community forums and work groups in efforts to find better solutions and listen to residents more clearly.

Those last mentions were captured because we were paying attention, because we were there. We’re often some of the few willing to sit hours upon hours in local government meetings, documenting important decisions that directly affect you and asking officials the difficult questions you brought forth.

Truth is often the line between comfort, compassion, chaos, and ultimately, growth and change. And the non-exhaustive list of moments above shows our efforts to continue shining a light on truth through public service and investigative journalism matters, especially in our own backyard.

We look forward to all 2024 will bring, and we cannot thank you, our readers, enough for your continued support as this team continues, with fervor and urgency, to be a voice for the people.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Conlon: Impactful journalism remains the focus. Here’s what we did in 2023.