Journalism Awards
The Nieman Foundation’s annual journalism awards recognize the work of newsrooms and journalists who have produced outstanding work in several categories. The awards were created to honor journalistic excellence and to draw attention to innovative and meticulous reporting projects, many of which have brought about important reforms.
During a ceremony in May 2023, the Nieman Foundation presented three of its awards – the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism, the Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism and the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence – to the 2023 winners and finalists. Recipients of those awards from the three previous years, who had been unable to receive their certificates in person due to COVID-19 restrictions, also attended and were recognized for their valuable achievements.
The Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism
The Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism recognizes the work of courageous journalists and journalism organizations around the world. Nieman Fellows in the class of 1964 established the award to honor the Nieman curator who retired that year, and new winners are chosen each year by fellows who are studying at Harvard. The award includes a $2,500 honorarium.
2023 Winner
Iranian journalists Niloofar Hamedi (left) and Elahe Mohammadi
Nieman Fellows in the class of 2023 selected Iranian journalists Niloofar Hamedi and Elahe Mohammadi as winners of the 2023 Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. The class chose the women in recognition of their “steadfast commitment to producing courageous journalism about issues in Iran affecting women, including the September 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.” The Fellows noted: “Hamedi and Mohammadi put their livelihoods and lives on the line and lost their freedom in the process. They knew the grave risks they might face but remained committed to telling Amini’s story. Journalists in Iran are risking their lives on a daily basis to report on the conditions and oppression there.”
Because Hamedi and Mohammadi were imprisoned in Iran and couldn’t accept the award in person, Jason Rezaian, a 2017 Nieman Fellow and a global opinions writer at The Washington Post who had been imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin Prison for 544 days, and Farnaz Fassihi, a 2015 Nieman Fellow and U.S.-Iranian journalist who serves as United Nations bureau chief for The New York Times, spoke with the class about Hamedi and Mohammadi and the plight of other Iranian journalists. Danny Fenster, a 2023Nieman Fellow who had been jailed in Myanmar before his Nieman year, moderated the conversation.
Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism
Established in 1967, the annual $20,000 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism honors investigative reporting of stories of national significance where the public interest is being ill-served.
2022 Winner (presented in 2023)
“The Price Kids Pay” a joint investigation by Jodi S. Cohen at ProPublica and Jennifer Smith Richards at the Chicago Tribune won the 2022 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism. The reporters exposed a loophole that for years allowed police in Illinois to routinely issue tickets to children for minor misbehavior, circumventing a 2015 state law that bans schools from fining students as a form of discipline. The reporters discovered that police had ticketed students more than 12,000 times over the course of three years with fines as high as $750. Dozens of school districts broke state law by referring students to police for truancy. Cohen and Smith Richards filed more than 500 public records requests and built a first-of-its-kind database that revealed the extent of school ticketing in the state.
The series led to swift reforms: The state superintendent asked schools to stop the ticketing practice, the Illinois attorney general opened a civil rights investigation, the state comptroller stopped collecting truancy debts and many school districts changed their discipline policies. The reporting also raised national attention, with some groups pushing the federal education department to begin tracking student ticketing. In February 2023, legislation was introduced to amend the Illinois school code to make it illegal for school personnel to use police to issue students citations for incidents that can be addressed through a school’s disciplinary process.
Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism
The Taylor Award for Fairness in Journalism honors news coverage by American journalists and news organizations that demonstrates exceptional balance and impartiality. Members of the Taylor family, who published The Boston Globe from 1872 to 1999, established the $10,000 award in 2001. Finalists receive $1,000 each.
2022 Winner
The Austin American-Statesman won the 2022 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism for its responsive reporting in the aftermath of the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed. The Statesman, together with Austin television station KVUE exposed the deeply flawed and delayed response by law enforcement to the shooting at the Robb Elementary School by publishing a hallway security video that showed events as they unfolded. The chilling footage provided answers to a community desperate for information at a time when official accounts about the events in the school were still inaccurate and inadequate. The paper also reported stories about the victims and their families and translated important news and information into Spanish for the local community.
Investigative reporter Tony Plohetski helped lead the Statesman’s coverage. Other members of the American-Statesman staff who contributed to the reporting include executive editor Manny García; interim managing editor Bob Gee; reporters Niki Griswold, Luz Moreno-Lozano, John Moritz and Nusaiba Mizan; photojournalists Aaron Martinez and Briana Sanchez; and video producer Nate Chute.
Judges selected two other entries as finalists for the Taylor Award:
- “Words of Conviction: Tracing a Junk Science Through the Justice System” a ProPublica investigation by reporter Brett Murphy that revealed the origins and scope of 911 call analysis, a dubious technique that has been used by some law enforcement departments to prosecute people across the country
- “The Landlord and the Tenant” a long-form narrative account of the systemic failures that led to a deadly fire in Milwaukee in 2013, reported by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Raquel Rutledge and ProPublica reporter Ken Armstrong, both Nieman alumni. The reporting offers nuanced profiles of the two individuals at the center of the story.
I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence
Established in 2008, the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence recognizes journalistic independence and honors the life of investigative journalist I.F. Stone. The award is presented annually to a journalist whose work captures the spirit of independence, integrity and courage that characterized I.F. Stone’s Weekly, published from 1953 to 1971. The award includes a $1,500 honorarium.
2023 Winner
Wendi C. Thomas, founding editor and publisher of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom in Memphis, Tennessee, won the 2023 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence. MLK50 focuses on poverty, power and a range of public policy issues that affect local residents. Since its founding in 2017, it has provided indispensable community journalism and has told the stories of marginalized people too often ignored by established news media.
As part of ProPublica’s 2019 Local Reporting Network, Thomas investigated a nonprofit hospital’s aggressive debt collection practices in the award-winning “Profiting from the Poor” series, which led the hospital to erase nearly $12 million in hospital debt after suing more than 8,300 people. The series is just one example of the tangible, positive impact of MLK50’s journalism in the community.
I.F. Stone Medal jury member Jasmine Brown said: “Wendi Thomas followed her North Star, establishing MLK50 despite doubters who told her a nonprofit newsroom centered on the vulnerable could not stand. MLK50 has proven there is strength in a press that is proximate to the people. MLK50’s reporting has transformed lives and brought about change. As a shining beacon of local journalism, this newsroom gives me hope that there are scalable models for the press to survive and thrive.”
J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards
The J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project was established in 1998 to honor the best in American nonfiction book writing. Co-administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation, the project is sponsored by the family of the late Mark Lynton, a historian and senior executive at the firm Hunter Douglas in the Netherlands.
The 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize ($10,000)
From left: Linda Villarosa, Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
- Winner: Linda Villarosa for “Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation” (Doubleday)
Villarosa’s book exposes the racial inequalities underlying the U.S. medical system that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to their white counterparts. She reveals study after study of medical settings shows worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients, reveals the detrimental outcomes of environmental racism and describes how racism ages Black people prematurely. Villarosa is a professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY with a joint appointment at the City College of New York and a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine.
- Finalist: Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa for “His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice” (Viking)
The video recording of George Floyd’s death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. “His Name Is George Floyd” places his narrative within the context of the country’s enduring legacy of institutional racism. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews, Samuels and Olorunnipa offer a moving exploration of George Floyd’s America. Samuels is a staff writer at The New Yorker and former national political enterprise reporter for The Washington Post. Olorunnipa is White House bureau chief for The Washington Post.
The 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress Awards (two $25,000 prizes)
Jesselyn Cook and Mike Hixenbaugh
- Winner: Jesselyn Cook for “The Quiet Damage” (Crown)
“The Quiet Damage” examines the psychological draw of QAnon and adjacent conspiracy theories, their devastating toll on American families and the power of divisions that could last for generations in American life. It follows five families torn apart at the seams, chronicling their stories from multiple perspectives. Cook is an Atlanta-area journalist whose reporting focuses on online dangers, including weaponized conspiracy theories and other disinformation.
- Winner: Mike Hixenbaugh for “Uncivil: One Town’s Fight over Race and Identity, and the New Battle for America’s Schools” (Mariner Books)
“Uncivil” takes readers inside the Christian nationalist campaign to take control of public education in the U.S., placing this movement in historical context and illuminating the stories of the students and teachers whose lives have been upended. Hixenbaugh anchors his narrative in a wealthy Texas suburb where a conservative backlash against the racial reckoning of 2020 becomes a national model—or cautionary tale, depending on who you ask—in the new battles over critical race theory and LGBTQ inclusion that have spread to every corner of the country. “Uncivil” also traces the rise of a new resistance movement led by a diverse coalition of student activists, educators, and parents. Hixenbaugh is a senior investigative reporter for NBC News based in Houston.
The 2023 Mark Lynton History Prize ($10,000)
Deborah Cohen
- Winner: Deborah Cohen for “Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took on a World at War” (Random House)
“Last Call at the Hotel Imperial” is the story of American foreign correspondents John Gunther, H.R. Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean and Dorothy Thompson, who, in the tumultuous years between the world wars, landed exclusive interviews with Hitler, Mussolini, Nehru and Gandhi, and helped to shape what Americans knew about the world. They broke longstanding taboos about proper subjects for reporting and argued about love, war, sex, death, and everything in between. Cohen is the Richard W. Leopold Professor of History at Northwestern University.
Kelly Lytle Hernández
- Finalist: Kelly Lytle Hernández, “Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire & Revolution in the Borderlands” (W.W. Norton)
“Bad Mexicans” tells the story of the magonistas, the migrant rebels who sparked the 1910 Mexican Revolution from the United States. Determined to oust Mexico’s dictator, Porfirio Díaz, who encouraged the plunder of his country by U.S. imperialists, the rebels had to outrun and outsmart the swarm of U.S. authorities vested in protecting the Díaz regime. They lived in hiding, wrote in secret code, and launched armed raids into Mexico until they ignited the world’s first social revolution of the 20th century. A 2019 MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient, Lytle Hernández holds the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History and directs the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA.
Watch a conversation with the 2023 Lukas Book Prize winners on C-SPAN.