This year nearly 150 examples of investigative reporting were nominated for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative reporting. The following 24 semi-finalists were among the top 30 entries that this year’s judges read. While they were not selected as one of the six finalists for the prize, the judges deemed that they were of extremely high quality and fit the Prize’s criteria for impact on US public policy, and so are worthy of public recognition. They are listed here in alphabetical order, with links to the original reporting.
A Risky Wager The New York Times Eric Lipton, Kenneth P. Vogel, Emily Steel, Rebecca R. Ruiz, Walt Bogdanich, Joe Drape, Anna Betts, Andrew Little, Elizabeth Sander, Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly
Eavesdropping in Maine Jails The Maine Monitor (with editor assistance from Investigative Editing Corps and funding from Report For America, International Women’s Media Foundation, and the Pulitzer Center) Samantha Hogan
Going for Broke Reuters Mike Spector, Dan Levine, Benjamin Lesser, Disha Raychaudhuri, Kristina Cooke
Harm’s Way Columbia Journalism Investigations, Center for Public Integrity, and Type Investigations Alex Lubben, Julia Shipley, Zak Cassel, Olga Loginova, Mc Nelly Torres, Kristen Lombardi, Jamie Smith Hopkins, Sasha Belenky
Hopped Up Bloomberg News Polly Mosendz, Caleb Melby, Jackie Davalos, Gillian Tan
Innocence Sold South Florida Sun Sentinel David Fleshler, Spencer Norris, Brittany Wallman
Leave No Trace ABC News Studios/Hulu Irene Taylor, Nigel Jaquiss
Legal Weed, Broken Promises Los Angeles Times Adam Elmahrek, Paige St. John, Kiera Feldman, Marisa Gerber, Robert J. Lopez, Ruben Vives, Brian van der Brug
Secrecy laws in Massachusetts WBUR, The Boston Globe, NPR, New England News Collaborative (NENC) Ally Jarmanning, Walter Wuthmann, Todd Wallack
Shadow Diplomats International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and ProPublica Will Fitzgibbon, Debbie Cenziper, Eva Herscowitz, Delphine Reuter, ICIJ Data Team, Emily Anderson Stern, Michael Korsh, Jordan Anderson, Hannah Feuer
The Price Kids Pay Chicago Tribune and ProPublica Jennifer Smith Richards, Jodi S. Cohen
Title IX: Falling short at 50 USA Today Kenny Jacoby, Nancy Armour, Rachel Axon, Steve Berkowitz, Lindsay Schnell, Jessica Luther, Dan Wolken
Announcing the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting Finalists
The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is proud to announce the six finalists for the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. The Goldsmith Prize, first awarded in 1993 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 the March 15 ceremony – receives $25,000. All prize monies go to the journalist or team that produced the reporting.
“This year’s finalists represent investigative journalism at its finest – classic stories that begin with a reporter tugging at a loose thread or following a lede, and uncovering truths too awesome to ignore,” said Nancy Gibbs, Director of the Shorenstein Center. “If we are to measure the value of journalism by its impact, this group of reporters are worth their weight in gold.”
The 2023 Goldsmith Prize winner will be announced at the awards ceremony, to be held March 15, 2023 at Harvard’s Sanders Theater. The in-person ceremony will be open to public, and will be livestreamed at GoldsmithAwards.org and ShorensteinCenter.org.
Over the course of their investigation, reporters Eliza Shapiro and Brian M. Rosenthal revealed that more than 100 boys’ schools operated by New York State’s fervently religious Hasidic community were providing only paltry instruction in English and math for their 50,000 students, and almost no science or social studies—and recording the worst test scores in the state. What’s more, the intensive religious instruction in Yiddish that made up nearly the entire school day was often punctuated by slaps, kicks and other regular uses of corporal punishment. All of it was being supported by taxpayer money—more than $1 billion in the past four years alone. After the stories ran, the State Board of Regents voted on rules aimed at holding private schools to stricter academic standards. Their reporting prompted multiple investigations at the state and federal level, and outraged lawmakers who pledged to introduce legislation that would bar corporal punishment in private schools.
Investigating Federal Prison Abuse
The Associated Press Michael Balsamo and Michael Sisak
The moment Jeffrey Epstein was found dead from a suicide in his federal jail cell, Mike Balsamo and Mike Sisak got to work. The two wanted to understand how the Federal Bureau of Prisons could have been so dysfunctional that its highest profile inmate in decades could have taken his own life. What followed was an investigation involving the federal Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest law enforcement agency, that exposed systemic corruption, abuse of inmates and a culture that punished whistleblower employees while rewarding those involved in beatings of inmates and other serious misconduct with promotions, despite a record of dangerous behavior. In response to the AP’s investigation, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee demanded Attorney General Merrick Garland fire then-director Michael Carvajal, leading to Carvajal’s resignation. The reporting also led to a series of hearings by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
MIA: Crisis in the Ranks
The Philadelphia Inquirer Barbara Laker, David Gambacorta, and William Bender
With Philadelphia suffering record levels of gun violence, Barbara Laker, David Gambacorta, and William Bender spent a year investigating police officers’ abuse of Pennsylvania’s generous “Heart and Lung” disability benefit. An astonishing number were deemed by union-selected doctors as unavailable to work – one in seven patrol officers, or 14%, far greater than the percentage of disabled police in other cities. The reporters learned that the police union wielded a little-known power to select the doctors who treated the injured cops – a major conflict of interest – and discovered that of the seven doctors selected for the program, five had a history of questionable behavior. The Inquirer investigation prompted an audit of the benefits program by the City Controller, internal investigations by the Police Commissioner, and the introduction of a bill by state lawmakers aimed at cracking down on fraud and abuse within the police disability program. The reporting team also cites that by year’s end, the number of officers out with injury claims dropped by 31%, and the number of injured officers cleared for court duty more than tripled.
Power Play: How utilities paid a consulting group that infiltrated local news media, attacked clean energy foes and intimidated public officials
Floodlight and NPR Miranda Green, David Folkenflik, and Mario Ariza
A months-long investigation by NPR’s David Folkenflik and Floodlight’s Mario Ariza and Miranda Green uncovered just how far two major power companies went to try to make sure their political foes didn’t dampen their profits or hold them accountable. The reporting, building off of an earlier Floodlight investigation with the Orlando Sentinel, found that Alabama Power and Florida Power & Light paid consulting company Matrix LLC millions over a decade, resulting in undisclosed payments to news outlets that cast the utilities in a positive light and were critical of those who questioned their power. A freelance ABC News producer was also hired to misleadingly represent herself and confront politicians over controversies relevant to Matrix clients. These revelations were followed by leadership changes at both power companies, internal investigations into their work with Matrix, as well as broad calls for transparency and reform. ABC News also severed ties with the freelance journalist. The story offers a rare window into the way power companies and consultants manipulate the democratic system, and the pressure local regulators and lawmakers confront if they seek to hold those corporations accountable, and what happens when local news erodes.
Reporter Anna Wolfe read a startling statistic published in a 2017 report: Mississippi, the most impoverished state in the nation, was approving just 1.5% of families applying for cash welfare assistance. That statistic sent Wolfe looking for where the state was sending the federal funds, if not to families who needed them. Over the next five years, Wolfe submitted more than 80 public records requests and faced repeated stonewalling from government officials and agencies. Through the challenging reporting process, she discovered that the state was funneling tens of millions-worth of welfare grants through two nonprofits under the guise of former Gov. Phil Bryant’s nebulous anti-poverty program called Families First for Mississippi, which refused to provide direct aid, instead leading needy families down dead ends. After the arrests of state welfare agency and nonprofit officials for embezzlement, Wolfe’s reporting didn’t stop: Through private text messages that officials have concealed from the public, Wolfe uncovered corruption and influence peddling extending all the way to Bryant and former NFL legend Brett Favre. Bryant admitted to many of the report’s findings in a rare on-the-record interview. Multiple defendants have since come forward with allegations against Bryant or have relied on the reporting in court filings that insist Bryant be held accountable. Congressman Bennie Thompson and the NAACP president urged the U.S. Attorney General and Department of Justice to investigate Bryant’s otherwise ignored role in the scandal, and Thompson has vowed to hold congressional hearings. State lawmakers, citing the investigation, held multiple hearings about how the state could better spend its welfare grants. Several legislators filed bills in early 2023 to reform the welfare agency’s management and oversight over federal funds. Meanwhile, federal criminal investigations into the scandal continue.
Undocumented and Underage
Reuters Joshua Schneyer, Mica Rosenberg, and Kristina Cooke
A Dickensian scenario was playing out in America’s South: undocumented immigrant children, some as young as 12, working in dangerous factories building parts for two of the world’s most successful automakers: Hyundai and sister brand Kia. Initially prompted by the soaring number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border and ending up in rural Alabama, Reuters reporters Joshua Schneyer, Mica Rosenberg, and Kristina Cooke spent more than a year with many of the state’s rural immigrant communities and uncovered widespread abuses in a fast-growing local industry enabled by billions of dollars in tax incentives and lax labor laws. First, the reporters found that Alabama staffing agencies were hiring underage migrants and putting them to work in poultry slaughterhouses. Soon, they discovered agencies had also placed kids at SMART Alabama LLC, a parts maker owned by Hyundai. Children were working long hours, including graveyard shifts, in dangerous conditions. Some were racing to repay human smugglers who had brought them over the border, authorities and migrants said. As a result of the reporting, authorities quickly found and rescued kids from one factory, and employers released other children from similar jobs. Alabama and U.S. agencies launched at least 10 investigations into the hiring practices. A Hyundai supplier and its recruiter have been fined for violating child labor laws. And Hyundai has acknowledged the problem, pledged reforms to remove all child labor from its supply chain, and begun discussions with the U.S. Department of Labor about the violations.
Judy Woodruff to Receive 2023 Goldsmith Career Award
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 Judy Woodruff, whose groundbreaking career in broadcast journalism spans generations. Best known for her measured, fact-first delivery, she has earned the respect and trust of viewers all over the country.
“Judy has been a fixture on American television screens for nearly half a century,” said Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs. “Always calm, clear-headed and reassuring, she has delivered some of the biggest stories of our lifetimes and has never wavered in her pursuit of the truth.”
Woodruff will be the featured speaker at this year’s Goldsmith Awards ceremony, to be held on March 15, 2023 in Harvard’s Sanders Theater. The in-person ceremony will be open to public, and will be livestreamed at GoldsmithAwards.org and ShorensteinCenter.org. Admission to the in-person ceremony is free, but registration is required. Visit the Harvard Box Office online or in person to reserve your tickets.
2023 Goldsmith Career Award winner Judy Woodruff:
Broadcast journalist Judy Woodruff is the Senior Correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, after serving for 11 years as its Anchor and Managing Editor. During 2023 and 2024, she is undertaking a reporting project, “America at a Crossroads,” to better understand the country’s political divide. She has covered politics and other news for more than four decades at CNN, NBC, and PBS. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Peabody Journalistic Integrity Award, the Poynter Medal, an Emmy for Lifetime Achievement, and the Radcliffe Medal, she and the late Gwen Ifill were together awarded Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism after Woodruff and Ifill were named co-anchors of the PBS NewsHour in 2013, marking the first time an American national news broadcast would be co-anchored by two women.
For 12 years, Woodruff served as anchor and senior correspondent for CNN, where her duties included anchoring the weekday program, Inside Politics. At PBS from 1983 to 1993, she was the chief Washington correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. From 1984-1990, she also anchored PBS’ award-winning weekly documentary series, Frontline with Judy Woodruff. In 2011, Woodruff was the principal reporter for the PBS documentary Nancy Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. And in 2007, she completed an extensive project for PBS and other news outlets on the views of young Americans called Generation Next: Speak Up. Be Heard. At NBC News, Woodruff was White House correspondent from 1977 to 1982. For one year after that she served as NBC’s Today show chief Washington correspondent. She wrote the book, This is Judy Woodruff at the White House, published in 1982 by Addison-Wesley.
Woodruff was a 2005 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. She is a founding co-chair of the International Women’s Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in communication industries worldwide. She serves on the boards of trustees of the Freedom Forum and The Duke Endowment.
Nominate a story for the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting
Submissions for the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting are now open. The deadline to submit is Wednesday, January 11, 2023, 11:59 pm ET.
Has your reporting made an impact on U.S. government or policy at the national, state, or local level (or do you know a journalist whose stories have made a difference)? Apply for the 2022 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. The Goldsmith Prize, now in its 30th year, seeks to celebrate and amplify the impact of investigative journalism and highlight its importance to our democracy.
WHY APPLY?
This annual prize of $25,000 is awarded to the journalist or journalists whose investigative reporting best promotes more effective and ethical conduct of government, the making of public policy, or the practice of politics.
Five additional finalists each receive a $10,000 prize.
Previous winners and finalists have come from all kinds of news organizations: from legacy newspapers to digital natives; from nationally-renowned broadcast networks to reporters working on a shoestring at a tiny local paper. Judges consider each entry on its own merits – even if you’ve never considered entering a journalism prize before, we strongly encourage you to apply!
Similarly, a wide variety of stories meeting the criteria will be considered. Recent finalists included subjects ranging from the nation’s largest unreported special-interest political campaign, to carbon monoxide poisoning in public housing.
It is FREE to enter! (Up to two entries per news organization).
Submissions for the 2023 Goldsmith Book Prize Now Open
Submissions for the 2023 Goldsmith Book Prize are now open. The deadline to submit is Friday, December 16, 2022, 11:59pm ET. Entries for the 2023 Goldsmith Book Prize must have been published between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2022.
The Shorenstein Center awards the Goldsmith Book Prize to the best trade and best academic book published in the United States in the last 24 months that fulfills the objective of improving democratic governance through an examination of the intersection between the media, politics and public policy. Books outside the defined category are not eligible for an award and will not be reviewed by the award committee.
Recent Goldsmith Book Prizes have been awarded to books about political journalism, the history of news, news and political polarization, internet access and freedom, local news, and digital democracy.
The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is pleased to present the 2022 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting to:
About the winning investigative reporting project, and its impact:
Washington Post reporters spent 2021 traversing the corners of the country most ravaged by natural disasters to find out if the government really has people’s backs in the long-term. The reporters conducted 300 interviews and several databases, filed dozens of records requests, and analyzed thousands of pages of individual Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) case records and other documents. What they found was that FEMA was regularly not providing help when it was needed for survivors of disasters. They chronicled the agency denying help to Black families living on land passed down since a generation after slavery, abandoning poor families without assistance for transitioning out of FEMA trailer parks as they shut down, and denying aid to 90% of disaster survivors, often for minor errors in their paperwork. This reporting led to major process changes at FEMA to directly address these issues, and bipartisan legislation currently working its way through Congress.
In awarding the 2022 Goldsmith Prize to the team behind “FEMA’s Disasters,” the judging committee celebrated their intensive database work and dogged reporting in the field that laid bare the scope of FEMA’s failures.
“The Post exposed FEMA’s snarls and punitive policies with such power that congress and the administration moved immediately to make long-overdue changes,” said 2022 Goldsmith Judge and 2020 Goldsmith Career Award Winner Kathleen Carroll. “Now, because of Hannah and Andrew’s reporting, more people will get the help they need from FEMA – and that is the kind of impactful journalism that is at the burning heart of the Goldsmith Awards.”
The 2022 Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize judges were: Kathleen Carroll, Beth Daley, Betsy Fischer Martin, Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak, Mike Greenfield, Kathy Kiely, Wendy Ruderman, Todd Wallack, and Setti Warren. Nancy Gibbs, Director of the Shorenstein Center, chaired the meeting. Judges recused themselves from voting on entries from their employers.
Watch the 2022 Goldsmith Awards ceremony here. Live at 6pm ET on April 5th, and recorded for future viewing.
Michele Norris to be honored with 2022 Goldsmith career Award
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 Michele Norris, whose career in print, television, and radio has made her a leading voice on race, identity, and the nature of modern American democracy.
“The music of Michele’s writing is matched by its moral power,” says Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs. “She picks up the hard questions and examines them fearlessly, in a way that has made her one of the great, wise voices of this generation.”
Norris will be the featured speaker at this year’s Goldsmith Awards ceremony, to be held on April 5, 2022 in Harvard Kennedy School’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum. The in-person ceremony will be open to Harvard ID holders, and will be livestreamed for the public at GoldsmithAwards.org and ShorensteinCenter.org, as well as by the Institute of Politics, which hosts the JFK Jr. Forum.
2022 Goldsmith Career Award winner Michele Norris:
Michele Norris is a columnist for The Washington Post opinion page and her voice will be familiar to followers of public radio, where from 2002 to 2012 she was a host of National Public Radio’s afternoon magazine show, All Things Considered. Norris is also the Founding Director of The Race Card Project, a Peabody Award-Winning narrative archive where people around the world share their experiences, questions, hopes, dreams, laments, and observations about identity –in just six words–as the starting point for conversations about race. Norris is also a National Geographic Storytelling Fellow.
She is the author of The Grace of Silence, A Memoir where Norris turns her formidable interviewing and investigative skills on her own background to unearth long-hidden family secrets that raise questions about her cultural legacy and shed new light on America’s complicated racial history. Norris is currently at work on her second book exploring race and identity in America in the period bookended by the presidencies of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. She has received numerous awards for her work, including Emmy, Peabody, and Dupont Awards. In 2009, she was named “Journalist of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists. Before joining NPR in 2002, Michele spent almost ten years as a reporter for ABC News in the Washington Bureau. She has also worked as a staff writer for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.
Norris was a 2015 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. She is a judge for The Chancellor Awards and a board member for the Peabody Awards. She is also a board member of the President Obama oral history project at Columbia University and the storytelling committee for the Obama Presidential Center under construction in the South Side of Chicago.
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The Goldsmith Awards, founded in 1991 and funded by a gift from the Greenfield Foundation, strives to foster a more insightful and spirited public debate about government, politics and the press, and to demonstrate the essential role of a free press in a thriving democracy.
The finalists for the 2022 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting will join Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs for a discussion on the craft and impact of their work, and the importance of investigative journalism in a free society.
Visit goldsmithawards.org/ceremony/2022 to learn more about this year’s finalists. The winner will be announced at the Goldsmith Awards Ceremony on April 5, 2022 at 6:00 p.m. ET. The ceremony will be live streamed at GoldsmithAwards.org and ShorensteinCenter.org.
Semi-Finalists for 2022 Goldsmith Prize
This year nearly 170 examples of investigative reporting were nominated for the Goldsmith Prize. The following 24 semi-finalists were among the top 30 entries that this year’s judges read. While they were not selected as one of the six finalists for the prize, the judges deemed that they were of extremely high quality and fit the Prize’s criteria for impact on US public policy, and so are worthy of public recognition. They are listed here in alphabetical order, with links to the original reporting.
