Past Winners

2024

Best Single Article/Story 

Paige Williams
“A Small-Town Paper Lands A Very Big Story” (PDF)

Best Profile

Emily Sohn
“The Catch”

Best Commentary 

Lydia Polgreen
“It’s Not a Good Sign When People Who Don’t Pay for News Have So Little to Choose From” (PDF) 

John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting

Jeremy W. Peters, Jim Rutenberg, Katie Robertson and Michael S. Schmidt
“Fox’s Costly Miscalculation”

Submissions:

• “How Hard Lines in Fox-Dominion Deal Talks Suddenly Softened” (PDF)
• “Carlson’s Text That Alarmed Fox Leaders: ‘It’s Not How White Men Fight’” (PDF)
• “Missteps and Miscalculations: Inside Fox’s Legal and Business Debacle” (PDF)

Special Topic Category 1 for 2024: Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media

Maggie Harrison Dupré
“Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers”

Special Topic Category 2 for 2024: Best Story on Media Coverage of the Israeli-Hamas Conflict

Brooke Gladstone
“The Fog of War Shrouds a Devastating Conflict”

2023

Best Single Article/Story

Reniqua Allen-Lamphere, “Her Name Was Shirley”

Best Profile

Joe Pompeo, “Far From the Maddow Crowd” (PDF)

Best Commentary

Erik Wemple, “Commentary on media issues”

Submissions:

• “’Calm down,’ libs! A look back at select pieces of Roe commentary”
• “James Bennet was right”
• “News outlets stand by their midterm debacle”

John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting

Nicholas Confessore and Karen Yourish, “Tucker Carlson’s America”

Submissions:

• “How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable” (PDF)
• “How Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News – and Became Trump’s Heir” (PDF)
• “Inside the Apocalyptic Worldview of ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’”

Special Topic Category for 2023 – Best Story on Media Coverage of the War in Ukraine

Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano, Aaron Krolik, Neil MacFarquhar, Steven Lee Myers and Stuart A. Thompson, “Russia’s Disinformation Machine”

Submissions:

• “An Alternate Reality: How Russia’s State TV Spins the Ukraine War” (PDF)
• “What Russians See in the News: A War Over Western Plans to Subjugate Them” (PDF)
• “Truth Is Another Front in Putin’s War” (PDF)

2022

• Janell Ross, “The Key Role a Local Newspaper Played in the Trial Over Ahmaud Arbery’s Murder”
• Jaeah Lee, “The Courts Beat”
• Alexandria Neason, “On Atonement”
• Robert Mackey, “Meet the riot squad: right-wing reporters who use viral videos to smear BLM”
• Jen Wieczner, “Dominion Voting: Big Lies vs. Big Lawsuits”
• Sheera Frenkel and Tiffany Hsu, “Despite Outbreaks Among Unvaccinated, Fox News Hosts Smear Shots”; “The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online”; “How Local Media Spreads Misinformation From Vaccine Skeptics”

2021

• Lauren Markham, “The Heat Reporter”
• Issac J. Bailey, “George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and One Journalist’s Painfully Honest Self-Examination on Racism”; “Is Biden’s Stutter Being Mistaken for ‘Cognitive Decline’?”; “Will This Racial Reckoning Finally Force Newsrooms to Listen to Every Staffer’s Voice?”
• Charles Bethea, “What Happens When the News Is Gone?”
• Micah Loewinger and Hampton Stall with Brooke Gladstone and Katya Rogers, “How Zello Became A Recruitment & Organizing Tool for the Far Right”
• Lynsey Chutel, Lauren Harris, Linda Kinstler, Tony Lin, Zainab Sultan and Stephania Taladrid, “Infection and Repression”
• Casey Quackenbush, “Without a Campaign to Cover, Reporters Shift to Covering the Voting Process Itself”

2020

WATCH: 2020 Mirror Award winners discuss their winning work

2019

• Jesse Brenneman and Lois Beckett, “Face the Racist Nation”
• Tim Alberta, “James O’Keefe Can’t Get No Respect”
• Sarah Jones, “The great remove”
• Davey Alba, “How Duterte Used Facebook To Fuel the Philippine Drug War”
• Ryan Mac, Charlie Warzel, Alex Kantrowitz, Pranav Dixit, Megha Rajagopalan, Aisha Nazim, Miles O’Brien and Cameron Hickey, “Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo — And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed,” “How WhatsApp Destroyed A Village,” “‘We Had To Stop Facebook’: When Anti-Muslim Violence Goes Viral”
• Ronan Farrow, “Trouble at the Top,” “As Leslie Moonves Negotiates His Exit from CBS, Six Women Raise New Assault and Harassment Claims”

2018

• Lois Parshley, “Editor in Exile”
• Jim Rutenberg, “RT, Sputnik and Russia’s New Theory of War”
• Jack Shafer and Tucker Doherty, “The Media Bubble Is Worse Than You Think”
• Amanda Robb, “Pizzagate: A Slice of Fake News,” “Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal”
• Irin Carmon and Amy Brittain, “Eight women say Charlie Rose sexually harassed them — with nudity, groping and lewd calls”
• Ronan Farrow for a series of investigative pieces on Harvey Weinstein
• Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, Rachel Abrams, Ellen Gabler, Susan Dominus, Jim Rutenberg and Steve Eder for a series of investigative pieces on Harvey Weinstein

2017

• Sarah Esther Maslin, “A light in the underworld”
• Soraya Chemaly and Catherine Buni, “The secret rules of the internet”
• Eric Alterman, “How False Equivalence Is Distorting the 2016 Election Coverage”
• Gabriel Sherman,“The Revenge of Roger’s Angels,” “Former Fox News Booker Says She Was Sexually Harassed and ‘Psychologically Tortured’ by Roger Ailes for More than 20 Years,” “Sources: Megyn Kelly Told Murdoch Investigators that Roger Ailes Sexually Harassed Her”

2016

• Peter Elkind, “Inside the Hack of the Century”
• Celeste LeCompte, “Automation in the Newsroom”
• Matthew Billy, “I Want My MTV”
• Taffy Brodesser-Akner, “Anchorman: The Legend of Don Lemon”
• Frank Rich, “A Dumb Job”
• Jonathan Mahler, “What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death?”

2015

• Yang Xiao, “Moral Hazard”
• Benjamin Wallace, “Kara Swisher Is Silicon Valley’s Most Feared and Well-Liked Journalist. How Does That Work?”
• Anna Griffin, “Where Are the Women? Why we need more female newsroom leaders”
• Amanda Hess, “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet”
• Bob Garfield and Katya Rogers, “OTM Goes Inside Washington”
• Bryan Burrough, Sarah Ellison and Suzanna Andrews, “The Snowden Saga: A Shadowland of Secrets and Light”

2014

• Rachel Aviv, “Local Story”
• Erik Wemple, “Politico’s Mike Allen, native advertising pioneer”
• Brooke Gladstone, Katya Rogers, Alex Goldman, PJ Vogt, Sarah Abdurrahman and Chris Neary, “The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook”
• Michael Specter, “The Operator”
• Michael Meyer, “False fronts,” “Unfinished business,” “News havens”
• Jina Moore, “Don’t blame the victim, or the photographer,” “Documenting domestic violence,” “‘South African Violence’ Only Explains the Pistorius Case If He’s Not Guilty”
• Frank Greve, “Combat Journalism”

2013

• Adrian Chen, “Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez,  The Biggest Troll on the Web” 
• Missouri Press Association, “Deadline in Disaster”
• Craig Silverman, “‘Confirmed’ and ‘sources’ may not mean what you think they do on Twitter,” “In real-time journalism, declaring what you won’t report can be just as important as what you will,” “False Paterno death reports highlight journalists’ hunger for glory”
• Syed Irfan Ashraf, “Hard times for journalists,” “The face of confidence,” “Military-media relationship”   
• Joe Eskenazi, “Top 5 Ways Bleacher Report Rules the World!”
• Ken Auletta, “Citizens Jain”
• Jodi Enda, “Staying Alive”

2012

• Adam Lashinsky, “How Apple works: Inside the world’s biggest startup”
• Rhonda Roland Shearer and Malik Ayub Sumbal, “Mrs. Bhutto’s Murder Anniversary Part 1: Troubling Double Standard, American photojournalism’s different treatment of foreign victims”
• Ken Auletta, “Changing Times”
• Joe Pompeo, “The road ahead for The Huffington Post: Nine months and a merger later, ‘Capital-J Journalism’ is still a work in progress”
• Anna Holmes, “The Disposable Woman,” “Anna Holmes on Donald Trump’s Sexism,” “The best TV criticism’s ink is pink, but powerful”
• Rebecca Traister, “The Soap Opera Is Dead! Long Live The Soap Opera!,” “30 Rock’ takes on feminist hypocrisy–and its own,” “Seeing ‘Bridesmaids’ is a social responsibility”
• Peter Maass, “The Toppling”

2011

• Gabriel Sherman, “Chasing Fox” 
• Jim Hopkins, “All Shook Up”
• Ken Auletta, “The Networker”
• Joel Meares, “The Biggest Fish in Albany?”
• James Wolcott  for Vanity Fair
• Eric Alterman for Center for American Progress
• Mary Van de Kamp Nohl, “Paper Money”

2010

• Steven Johnson, “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live”
• Megan Garber, “Common Knowledge”
• Evan Osnos, “The Forbidden Zone”
• Nancy Jo Sales, “The Unreal Rise of Jon and Kate Gosselin” 
• Michael Wolff for Vanity Fair
• Matt Pressman  for Vanity Fair
• Dean Starkman, “Power Problem”

2009

• Seth Mnookin, “Bloomberg Without Bloomberg”
• David Kamp, “Requiem for a Micro-celebrity”
• Ian Parker, “The Bright Side”
• David Carr for The New York Times
• Clive Thompson for Wired.com
• David Barstow, “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” “One Man’s Military-Industrial-Media Complex”

2008

• “Frontline” (PBS), “News War”
• Jeff Coplon, “How Race is Lived in America”
• Joe Nocera for The New York Times
• Ken Auletta, “Promises, Promises,”
• The New York Times, Monday Media section

2007

• Clive Thompson, “Blogs to Riches”
• Philip Weiss, “A Guy Named Craig”
• David Carr for The New York Times
• Dean Miller, “A Local Newspaper Endures a Stormy Backlash”
• Andreas Kluth, “Among the Audience: A Survey of New Media”
• HealthNewsReview.org, University of Minnesota School of Journalism & Mass Communication
• American Journalism Review