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.

+972 Magazine, an independent, nonprofit news organization run by a binational team of Palestinian and Israeli journalists, is winner of the 2025 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. In making their selection for the award, the Nieman Fellows recognized +972 Magazine — whose mission is to provide in-depth reporting “from the ground in Israel-Palestine” — for work that illuminates the complexity of life and politics in the region. The fellows cited the newsroom’s “vital, human-centered reporting on the war in Gaza and the courage of +972’s journalists on the ground.” They added: “With its unflinching commitment to facts in a highly contentious, often dangerous landscape, +972 Magazine has worked relentlessly with great moral conscience and deep integrity to document the human cost of war and occupation.”

“Alone and Exploited,” by New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier is winner of the 2023 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism. Dreier’s hard-hitting investigation exposed the staggering scope of America’s hidden migrant child workforce and examined the policy failures and willful disregard by government administrators and corporations alike that allowed children to work in dangerous, sometimes life-threatening conditions in violation of child labor laws. Dreier found migrant children, many who had entered the country as unaccompanied minors, working in all 50 states, often making household products for companies including Fruit of the Loom, Ford, General Mills, J. Crew, and Ben & Jerry’s. They held jobs in factories, on construction sites and in slaughterhouses, sometimes working overnight shifts to earn money to send to their families back home and often while trying to go to school. The reporting swiftly led to important government and corporate reforms.

“Stalled Justice,” a Chicago Tribune investigation into the Cook County’s dysfunctional court system in Illinois reported by Joe Mahr and Megan Crepeau, is the winner of the 2023 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism. The four-part investigation exposed the massive delays and logjams that for years have plagued the Cook County courts. The reporters revealed the toll the problems have taken on both victims of crime seeking justice and defendants in jail who have waited years for trials. Finalists are “Alone and Exploited,” a six-part series by New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier, that exposed the hidden world and stunning scope of migrant child labor in the U.S. and the many policy failures that have led to a shadow workforce across the country, and “The Mercy Workers,” a story by Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah, offers a rare look at a secretive profession of mitigation specialists who attempt to save prisoners from the death penalty.

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.

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.”

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.