March 16, 2021

Announcing the 2021 Goldsmith Prize Finalists and Career Award Winner

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is proud to announce the six finalists for the 2021 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Journalism. The Goldsmith Prize, founded in 1991 and funded by a gift from the Greenfield Foundation, honors the best public service investigative journalism that has made an impact on local, state, or federal public policy or the practice of politics in the United States. Finalists receive $10,000, and the winner – to be announced at a virtual ceremony on April 13th – receives $25,000. All prize monies go to the journalist or team that produced the reporting. 

Nancy Gibbs, Director of the Shorenstein Center and chair of the Goldsmith Awards Judges meeting, had this to say about the extraordinary year the world has been through, and the essential role of investigative journalism in making sense of the chaos, and creating more justice in the midst of crisis:

“In 2020, a series of once in a lifetime events—a global pandemic, economic upheaval, social protests, a historic election—touched every household, every community in the country. Given the stakes and the challenges, journalists had to find a way to do their jobs while protecting themselves and their families. This year’s Goldsmith Prize finalists represent the best in Public Interest Journalism at a time when that mission mattered most.”

– Nancy Gibbs

The 2021 Goldsmith Awards Ceremony on April 13th will also include an announcement of the 2021 Goldsmith Book Prize winners, and a conversation with 2021 Goldsmith Career Award winner Stephen Engelberg, founding Managing Editor and current Editor-in-Chief of ProPublica. Read on to learn more about this year’s honorees:

2021 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting Finalists

American Injustice
Reuters
Reuters Staff

As police violence and the failings of the U.S. justice system became front-page news across the country in 2020, Reuters reporters produced a series of data-driven investigative reports that included the first in-depth examination of qualified immunity; a revealing story on how police unions protect abusive officers; the first ever jail-by-jail accounting of inmate mortality in local lockups; and the first comprehensive, national accounting of judicial misconduct. This reporting led to increased awareness of the institutional failings of U.S. law enforcement, and was cited specifically in calls for reform of qualified immunity, and in cases against a corrupt judge and violent jail guards.

Careless
Indianapolis Star
Tony Cook, Emily Hopkins, and Tim Evans

Indianapolis Star reporters uncovered that government officials in Indiana took more than a billion dollars in federal funds earmarked for nursing home care and redirected it to hospital construction projects, while losing millions to fraud and padding the pockets of hospital executives. The state exploited loose rules and minimal oversight, and left Indiana with some of the worst nursing homes in America, just as the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Inadequate nursing home staffing across the state contributed to hundreds of deaths that likely could have been prevented with more resources. As a result of the IndyStar’s investigation, the state’s largest hospital system committed to a full review of its nursing home operations and the system’s longtime leader was forced to resign. At the state level, reforms have been proposed to increase nursing home funding, and tie Medicaid payments to quality of care.

Mississippi’s Dangerous and Dysfunctional Penal System
The Marshall Project, Mississippi Today, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, USA TODAY Network
Joseph Neff, Alysia Santo, Anna Wolfe, and Michelle Liu

Mississippi has America’s most dangerous and antiquated penal system – The Marshall Project and Mississippi Today uncovered why. Severe understaffing has made prisons so dangerous that even guards aren’t safe. The state is paying millions of dollars to private prisons for workers who don’t show up. And Mississippi is the only state still running debtors prisons, where people with mostly low-level convictions are sentenced to prison-like facilities to work off fines, court fees, and restitution. Residents in these “restitution centers” often stay longer than necessary to pay off their debts. Lawmakers have called for defunding the centers and turning them into halfway houses, and the Mississippi State Auditor issued a scathing report, saying “the state must fix this, and now.” He also launched an investigation into the tax dollars paid for ghost workers.

Mauled: When Police Dogs Are Weapons
The Marshall Project, AL.com, IndyStar, and Invisible Institute
Abbie VanSickle, Challen Stephens, Ryan Martin, Dana Brozost-Kelleher, Maurice Chammah, Andrew Fan and Ellen Glover

In a year-long collaboration between regional and national outlets, reporters assembled the a first-of-its-kind database of incidents nationwide in which police dogs were used to attack suspects, resulting in serious injuries. They found that most victims were suspected of low-level non-violent crimes, and some were just bystanders. Injuries, both physical and psychological, were often severe and long-lasting. They resulted in disfigurement, reconstructive surgeries, permanent disability, and at least three deaths. This collaborative reporting project started with one journalist examining a local case in Alabama, and expanded nationally, joining forces with a similar investigation that had started in Indiana. In response to the series, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police announced it was tightening its policies for deploying police dogs; a national police think tank is drafting new guidelines on the use of K-9 units; and lawmakers in several states are using the reporting to push for new restrictions on the use of police dogs to bite people.

Restoring Health Care for Pacific Islanders After Decades of Unfilled Promises
POLITICO
Dan Diamond

Tens of thousands of Marshallese islanders fled their homes for the United States after extensive nuclear weapons testing in the 1940s and 50s washed their islands in dangerous radiation. Under an international agreement they were promised federal benefits, including Medicaid. But, in 1996 Congress stripped them of their Medicaid benefits, and the Marshallese – many of whom now work in factories and farms in America’s heartland – have been struggling to get healthcare ever since. Their community was ravaged by COVID-19, as POLITICO reporter Dan Diamond documented through first-hand visits and outdoor interviews. As a result of his reporting on the COVID-19 crisis and the decades of neglect that the Marshallese community had suffered at the hands of the federal government, Congress officially restored Marshallese islanders’ rights to Medicaid in December 2020.

Targeted
Tampa Bay Times
Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi

The Tampa Bay Times discovered that the Pasco County, Florida sheriff’s office spent nearly a decade secretly collecting data and building an algorithm designed to predict which residents were likely to break the law. Using this algorithm, but often without probable cause or evidence of crimes, the department continuously monitored and harassed nearly 1,000 residents in the span of five years. The Tampa Bay Times’ interviews with former deputies discovered that the harassment tactics were designed to make these residents move out of the county or file a lawsuit. Some cases had far more dire consequences, including that of a teenager who died by suicide while under surveillance based on the sheriff’s algorithms. As a result of this reporting, state lawmakers have filed legislation to curb this style of policing in Florida, the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor has called for a federal investigation and four residents who were targeted are suing the sheriff’s office with the help of a national non-profit legal firm.

2021 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism

The Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism is given annually for outstanding contributions to the field of journalism, and for work that has enriched our political discourse and our society. This year’s winner is Stephen Engelberg, whose career in investigative reporting and as an editor at ProPublica has contributed to some of the most important reporting of recent decades. 

“Steve Engelberg has revived and redefined investigative journalism in the public interest when it is needed most. His intelligence, independence, and commitment to giving reporters the time and resources they need to do great work is reflected not just in the many prizes ProPublica has won, but in the impact its journalism has had. Democracy is stronger thanks to his vision and leadership, and we welcome the chance to celebrate his career achievement.”

– Nancy Gibbs

Stephen Engelberg was the founding managing editor of ProPublica from 2008–2012, and became editor-in-chief on January 1, 2013. He came to ProPublica from The Oregonian in Portland, where he had been a managing editor since 2002. Before joining The Oregonian, Mr. Engelberg worked for The New York Times for 18 years, including stints in Washington, D.C., and Warsaw, Poland, as well as in New York. He is chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

Mr. Engelberg’s work since 1996 has focused largely on the editing of investigative projects. He started the Times’s investigative unit in 2000. Projects he supervised at the Times on Mexican corruption (published in 1997) and the rise of Al Qaeda (published beginning in January 2001) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize.  During his years at ProPublica, the organization won 6 Pulitzer Prizes. He is the co-author of “Germs: Biological Weapons and America’s Secret War” (2001).