Newhouse School Announces Finalists in 2024 Mirror Awards Competition

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications today announced the finalists in the 2024 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Winners will be announced June 13 at an awards ceremony in New York City.

The finalists, selected by a group of journalists and journalism educators, are:

Best Single Article/Story

• Lauren Theisen, “Autostraddle Is Spiraling Toward A Shutdown Or A Sale” (PDF) – Defector
• Jon Marcus, “Why Retired Journalists Are Jumping Back into the Profession” – Nieman Reports
• Laura Wagner, “A crackdown on ‘woke’ coverage is tearing Atlanta magazine apart” (PDF) – The Washington Post
• Paige Williams, “A Small-Town Paper Lands A Very Big Story” (PDF) – The New Yorker

Best Profile

• Elaina Plott Calabro, “A Star Reporter’s Break With Reality” (PDF) – The Atlantic
• Tim Alberta, “Inside the Meltdown at CNN” (PDF) -The Atlantic
• Emily Sohn, “The Catch” – Long Lead
• Mary Retta, “The Hacker” – Columbia Journalism Review

Best Commentary

• Micah Loewinger, “On the Media’s Series on the Collapse of Digital Media” – On the Media
  • “Has the Podcast Bubble Finally Burst?“
  • “Is The New York Times A Tech Company?“
  • “The Rise of Worker-Owned Journalism“
• Lydia Polgreen, “It’s Not a Good Sign When People Who Don’t Pay for News Have So Little to Choose From” (PDF) – The New York Times
• Melanie McFarland, “A dude and a desk: Why women really don’t get to host late-night TV” – Salon
• James Rainey, “Capturing the media industry’s remorseless change” – Los Angeles Times
  • “The California newspaper that has no reporters left” (PDF)
  • “Santa Cruz ‘news desert’? An industry guru’s digital startup challenges local rivals” (PDF)
  • “Tavis Smiley’s #MeToo exile didn’t last. Inside his comeback on L.A. radio” (PDF)

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

• Ronan Farrow, “Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule” (PDF) – The New Yorker
• David Folkenflik, “A Reporter’s Ouster Exposes Political Pressure on West Virginia Public Broadcasting” (PDF) – NPR NEWS
• Jeremy W. Peters, Jim Rutenberg, Katie Robertson and Michael S. Schmidt, “Fox’s Costly Miscalculation” – The New York Times
  • “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)
• Sarah Ellison, Amy Gardner, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Shelly Tan, Derek Hawkins and Blair Guild, “At center of Fox News lawsuit, Sidney Powell and a ‘wackadoodle’ email” – The Washington Post
  • “At center of Fox News lawsuit, Sidney Powell and a ‘wackadoodle’ email” (PDF)
  • “What key players at Fox News said about the network and its viewers” (PDF)
  • “What Tucker Carlson said about Trump in private texts vs. on Fox News” (PDF)

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

• Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson, Katie Robertson, Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur, “Why A.I. Worries the Media” – The New York Times
  • “‘Not for Machines to Harvest’: Data Revolts Break Out Against A.I.” (PDF)
  • “Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership” (PDF)
  • “The People Onscreen Are Fake. The Disinformation Is Real.” (PDF)
• Maggie Harrison Dupré, “Sports Illustrated Published Articles by Fake, AI-Generated Writers” – Futurism                  
• Peter Kafka, “You’re going to see more AI-written articles whether you like it or not” – Vox

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

• Charlotte Klein, “’You Don’t Want to Hedge It?’: Inside the New York Times Debate Over Its Gaza Hospital Bombing Coverage” – Vanity Fair
  • “‘You Don’t Want to Hedge It?’: Inside the New York Times Debate Over Its Gaza Hospital Bombing Coverage” (PDF)
  • “‘There Has Never Been Less Tolerance for This’: Inside a New York Times Magazine Writer’s Exit Over Gaza Letter” (PDF)
  • “Fox News’ Trey Yingst on Trying to Get the Israel-Hamas Story Right: ‘There Is No Room for the Fog of War’” (PDF)

• Brooke Gladstone, “The Fog of War Shrouds a Devastating Conflict” – On the Media, WNYC

• Michael M. Grynbaum, Katie Robertson, Jeremy W. Peters and Steven Lee Myers, “Mideast Truth and Fiction” – The New York Times
  • “Harsh Visuals of War Leave Newsrooms Facing Tough Choices” (PDF)
  • “Jewish Viewers Find a Refuge in Fox News” (PDF)
  • “Fact or Fiction? In This War, It Is Hard to Tell.” (PDF)

About the Mirror Awards

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting. Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the awards honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. For information about the awards, visit newhouse.syr.edu/mirrorawards or email mirrorawards@syr.edu.