Awards & Conferences

The Nieman Foundation presents annual journalism awards to news organizations and journalists who have produced exceptional work in several categories. In honoring journalistic excellence, the foundation helps draw attention to innovative research, reporting and storytelling and share the lessons learned from groundbreaking reporting projects in print, on air and online.

ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother” series, which revealed how state abortion bans in the U.S. have led to preventable deaths, is the winner of the 2024 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism. ProPublica reporters Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Cassandra Jaramillo exposed the unexamined, irreversible consequences of the abortion bans by telling the stories of five pregnant women who died after they did not receive lifesaving care in states where abortion is illegal. Surana and photojournalist Stacy Kranitz also spent a year documenting what happened to a woman forced continue a life-threatening pregnancy in Tennessee, where abortion is outlawed. The reporting showed the human toll of the bans, many enacted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and spurred a number of reforms. Bingham Prize judge Sarah Varney said: “These stories were a turning point for Americans’ understanding of the seismic shift in women’s lives in the post-Dobbs era.”

In addition to winning the Worth Bingham Prize, “Life of the Mother,” the ProPublica series that revealed how state abortion bans in the U.S. have led to multiple preventable deaths, won the 2024 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism. Reported by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Cassandra Jaramillo with photography by Stacy Kranitz, the investigation uncovered the serious and sometimes fatal consequences of abortion restrictions that neither the federal government nor the states have tracked. The 2024 Taylor Award judges also selected two finalists: “Guilty of Grief,” a Miami Herald investigation by Carol Marbin Miller, Linda Robertson and Camellia Burris of the systemic failures that led to the killing of a mentally ill young man by a Miami-Dade police officer and the serious consequences for his grieving mother when she sought justice; and “Coming to America,” an intimate profile of Palestinian teenager Layan Albaz, who traveled alone from Gaza to Chicago to receive vital medical care after losing her legs in an Israeli airstrike. The story was written by Rhana Natour, with photographs by Eman Mohammed.

Mark Trahant is winner of the 2025 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence in recognition of his lifelong dedication to journalism and commitment to Native American storytelling, A member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe of Idaho, Trahant has worked for and led newsrooms in the American West for more than 50 years. He notably directed the revival of Indian Country Today after the news organization briefly stopped publishing in 2017. He rebranded the company as ICT, increased its coverage of Indigenous communities across North America and expanded the staff from three to more than 30 employees by 2024. He also served as president of the Native American Journalists Association, chairman of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and public information officer at the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C.

Palestinian journalists Anas Baba, a reporter for National Public Radio (NPR), and Shrouq Aila, an independent producer and photographer, are winners of the 2026 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. In making their selection for the award, the 2026 Nieman Fellows recognized the journalists’ outstanding work, unwavering commitment to journalism and exceptional courage reporting from an ongoing conflict. In a statement, the fellows said: “Working amid sustained Israeli military assault, mass forced displacement, a catastrophic famine and the consequent collapse of civilian infrastructure, Anas Baba and Shrouq Aila have continued to produce rigorous on-the-ground journalism that documents the human consequences of war with accuracy, independence and care.”

Recipients of the 2025 Lukas Prize Project Awards, presented jointly by Columbia Journalism School and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, include Rebecca Nagle, winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for “By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land,” Kathleen DuVal, winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize for “Native Nations: A Millennium in North America” and the two J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award winners: Susie Cagle for “The End of the West” and Dan Xin Huang for “Rutter: The Story of an American Underclass.” Co-authors Pamela Prickett and Stefan Timmermans are finalists for the Lukas Book Prize for “The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels.” The two finalists for the Lynton History Prize are Edda L. Fields-Black for “COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War” and Seth Rockman for “Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery.”

Read about the books shortlisted for the 2026 Lukas Prize Project Awards. Winners and finalists will be announced on March 17, 2026.

In addition to presenting annual journalism awards, the Nieman Foundation occasionally organizes conferences for journalists based around a central theme. In November 2019, the Nieman Foundation and the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard C-CHANGE) co-hosted “Covering Climate Change,” an intensive training workshop for journalists on covering climate change and related issues.

Together with University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Nieman made co-hosted the 2020 Campaign Journalism Conference for journalists covering the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The training took place in April 2019 in Chicago. In March 2018, Nieman hosted “Covering Nuclear Issues: A Workshop for Journalists,” a three-day conference that brought a diverse group of reporters, academics, researchers and practitioners together to help journalists deepen their reporting skills and expand their thinking around nuclear issues. And in March 2017, the Nieman Foundation presented another workshop for journalists, “Covering Housing.”

Nieman additionally organized and hosted “Power: Accountability and Abuse,” a two-day celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prizes in September 2016 that featured Pulitzer-winning performances and discussions centered on excellence in journalism and the arts.

The Nieman Foundation also hosts the Christopher J. Georges Conference on College Journalism for student journalists each spring.