2021 Awards

The 2021 Goldsmith Awards Ceremony was presented virtually on April 13, 2021. The 2021 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting to was awarded to “Mississippi’s Dangerous and Dysfunctional Penal System” by Joseph Neff, Alysia Santo, Anna Wolfe, and Michelle Liu of The Marshall Project, Mississippi Today, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, Jackson Clarion-Ledger, and the USA TODAY Network. The ceremony also honored Stephen Bates and John Maxwell Hamilton with Goldsmith Book Prizes and Stephen Engelberg with the Goldsmith Career Award. You can watch a recording of the ceremony above.

Ceremony Date

April 13, 2021

Note

The Goldsmith Awards Program is funded by an annual gift from the Goldsmith Fund of the Greenfield Foundation.

2021 Award and Prize Winners

Finalists for Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize

  • Finalist, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

    Mauled: When Police Dogs Are Weapons

    Abbie VanSickle, Challen Stephens, Ryan Martin, Dana Brozost-Kelleher, Maurice Chammah, Andrew Fan, and Ellen Glover, The Marshall Project, AL.com, IndyStar, and Invisible Institute

  • Finalist, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

    Targeted

    Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi, Tampa Bay Times

  • Finalist, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

    American Injustice

    Reuters Staff, Reuters

  • Finalist, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

    Restoring Health Care for Pacific Islanders After Decades of Unfilled Promises

    Dan Diamond, POLITICO

  • Finalist, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

    Careless

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

Judges

Nancy Gibbs, Director of the Shorenstein Center, chaired the meeting. Judges recused themselves from voting on entries from their employers. The 2021 Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize judges were:

Audra Burch

National Enterprise Correspondent for the New York Times, formerly Miami Herald’s Investigations Team; 2018 Goldsmith Prize finalist for “Fight Club: An Investigation into Florida Juvenile Justice,” and 2015 Goldsmith Prize winner for “Innocents Lost.”

Sarah Cohen

Knight Chair in Data Journalism, Cronkite School, Arizona State University; winner of the 2009 Goldsmith Prize for “Forced Out,” and 2006 Goldsmith Prize finalist for “Harvesting Cash.”

Mike Greenfield

Trustee of the Greenfield Foundation (financial supporters of the Goldsmith Awards Program); Co-Founder and CEO of Change Research.

John Huey

Former Editor in Chief of TIME; co-author of Riptide; Shorenstein Center Fellow, Spring 2013.

Nancy Kaffer

Columnist and member of the Detroit Free Press Editorial Board; winner of the 2016 David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism.

Sacha Pfeiffer

Correspondent for NPR’s Investigations team, former investigative reporter for The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team; winner of the 2003 Goldsmith Prize for “Crisis in the Catholic Church.”

Bina Venkataraman

Editorial page editor of The Boston Globe; former Senior Advisor for Climate Change Innovation in the Obama White House; former Director of Global Policy Initiatives at the Broad Institute of Harvard & MIT.

Todd Wallack

Data journalist and investigative reporter for The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team; 2020 Nieman-Berkman Klein fellow in Journalism Innovation; 2015 Goldsmith Prize finalist for “Shadow Campus.”

Setti Warren

Executive director of the Shorenstein Center; former Mayor of Newton, MA.