Newhouse School Announces Finalists in 2024 Toner Prizes Competition

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications on Tuesday announced the finalists in the 2024 Toner Prizes competition honoring excellence in political reporting. Winners will be announced March 25 at an awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. 

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

National

• Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, Brett Murphy, Alex Mierjeski, Kirsten Berg, Staff of ProPublica, “Friends of the Court”  (PDF) – ProPublica 
  • “Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire”
  • “Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation With GOP Billionaire Who Later Had Cases Before the Court”
  • “Clarence Thomas Secretly Participated in Koch Network Donor Events”
  • “The Judiciary Has Policed Itself for Decades. It Doesn’t Work.”
• Greg Jaffe, Patrick Marley, “Ottawa County” (PDF) – The Washington Post 
  • “In a thriving Michigan county, a community goes to war with itself”
  • “A sex educator in Michigan refused to be shamed. Then came the backlash.”
  • “The pandemic has faded in this Michigan county. The mistrust never ended.”
  • “Can the exhausted, angry people of Ottawa County learn to live together?”
• Astead Herndon, “A New Conversation About American Politics” – The New York Times 
  • “In a Song of the Summer, Clues for January in Iowa”
  • “Are Black Voters Leaving Democrats Behind?”
  • “In Search of Kamala Harris”
  • “The Pillow Guy and the R.N.C. Chair”
• Aaron Mendelson, “High Courts, High Stakes” (PDF) – Center for Public Integrity 
  • “How Republicans flipped America’s state supreme courts”
  • “‘Lose the courts, lose the war’: The battle over voting in North Carolina”
  • “Not just the Supreme Court: Ethics troubles plague state high courts, too”
  • “America’s state supreme courts don’t look like America”
• Hannah Dreier, “Alone and Exploited” (PDF) – The New York Times 
  • “Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.”
  • “As Migrant Children Were Put to Work, U.S. Ignored Warnings”
  • “A New Child Labor Crisis in America”
  • “Lawmakers Clamor for Action on Child Migrant Labor as Outrage Grows”
• Miles Parks, “How the far right tore apart one of the best tools to fight voter fraud” (PDF) – NPR
  • “The far right’s growing influence and 4 other takeaways from NPR’s ERIC investigation”
  • “Republican states swore off a voting tool. Now they’re scrambling to recreate it”

Local

• Dennis Wagner, Craig Harris, Julieta Soto, Madeline Yang, “Promises, Promises” (PDF) – The Coronado News 
  • “Tijuana’s sewage crisis continues to pollute Pacific Ocean, Coronado”
  • “Tijuana sewage crisis sickens tens of thousands”
  • “Will Mexico keep its bargain to fix sewage crisis?”
  • “‘Things are going badly for us’”
• Julia James, Geoff Pender, Bobby Harrison, Taylor Vance and Adam Ganucheau, “Gov. Tate Reeves’ donors and contract recipients” – Mississippi Today 
  • “Gov. Tate Reeves’ top political donors received $1.4 billion in state contracts from his agencies”
  • “How we reported our investigation into state contracts awarded to Gov. Tate Reeves’ top donors”
  • “List: See who has donated to Tate Reeves”
  • “A visual breakdown of massive 2023 fundraising hauls for Tate Reeves, Brandon Presley”
• George Joseph, Bianca Pallaro, Haidee Chu, Tom Robbins, Yoav Gonen, April Xu (Documented), Katie Honan, “Straw Donors, Ethics Violations Plague Eric Adams Campaign Fundraising Efforts” (PDF) – THE CITY
  • “New Questions Arise Over Adams Donors: One Says She Was Reimbursed, Others Say They Never Gave”
  • “Adams Campaign Repeatedly Ignored Regulators’ Demands to Identify Supporters Behind $300,000 in Contributions”
  • “Mayor’s Asian Affairs Liaison Raised Big Money—and Big Questions About Her Conduct”
  • “Department of Investigation Opens Inquiry into a Key Adams Aide, Winnie Greco”
• Robert Downen, “Far right Extremists in the Texas Republican Party” (PDF) – The Texas Tribune 
  • “Influential Texas activist Jonathan Stickland hosted white supremacist Nick Fuentes at office near Fort Worth”
  • “Conservative PAC leader’s meeting with white supremacist Nick Fuentes leads to condemnations, escalates GOP infighting”
  • “Nick Fuentes is just the latest white supremacist embraced by Defend Texas Liberty”
  • “Texas GOP chair stays silent on allies’ connections to antisemitic extremists”
• Sarah Blaskey, Joey Flechas, Tess Riski, Linda Robertson, Jay Weaver and Susan Merriam, “Shakedown City” (PDF) – Miami Herald 
  • “Absentee mayor: Miami’s Francis Suarez blurs line between public duty, pursuit of wealth”
  • “The kingdom and I: How Miami’s mayor helped Saudi Arabia rehab its bloody reputation”
  • “Miami’s political godfather Joe Carollo, unfazed by $63M beating, can’t wait for next fight”
• Anna Orso, Sean Walsh, Julia Terruso, Aseem Shukla, Layla Jones, “The race for Philadelphia’s 100th mayor” (PDF) – The Philadelphia Inquirer 
  • “Philly’s next mayor will inherit an unprecedented gun violence crisis. Here’s how it’s defining the race.”
  • “Philly neighborhoods fall into six segregated groups of Democrats”
  • “Cherelle Parker is proud of her West Oak Lane roots. As mayor, could she save Philly’s ‘middle neighborhoods’?”
  • “How Cherelle Parker won the primary: Black voters, a boost from labor, and a personal story of Philly grit”

• Staff of WBEZ Chicago and Chicago Sun-Times, “Chicago Mayoral Election 2023” (PDF) – WBEZ Chicago and Chicago Sun-Times 
  • “From raising taxes to defunding the police, we fact checked Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson”
  • “Crime is on Chicagoans’ minds. Here’s how nine mayoral hopefuls say they would address it.”

About the Toner Prizes

The Toner Prizes recognize the best U.S. national or local political reporting in any medium or on any platform, and honor late Syracuse University alumna Robin Toner ’76, the first woman to be national political correspondent for The New York Times.  The Toner Prizes are part of the Robin Toner Program in Political Reporting, established at the Newhouse School in 2009 to celebrate the life and work of Toner.