2025 Awards

The 2025 Goldsmith Awards will be held on April 3rd at Harvard Kennedy School. It will feature a fireside chat with 2025 Goldsmith Career Award winner Anderson Cooper.

The Goldsmith Awards ceremony also features the awarding of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Explanatory Reporting, and the Goldsmith Book Prizes. The ceremony will be held in front of a live audience of invited guests and Harvard community members at the JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard Kennedy School. Members of the public can watch the livestream below:

Ceremony Date

April 3, 2025

Note

The Goldsmith Prizes are funded by an annual gift from the Goldsmith Fund of the Greenfield Foundation.

2025 Award and Prize Winners

  • Winner, Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

    Right to Remain Secret

    Katey Rusch, Casey Smith | The San Francisco Chronicle and the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program

    The two-part investigative series “Right to Remain Secret,” a collaboration between UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program and the San Francisco Chronicle, unveiled how multiple police agencies in California used secretive legal settlements to mask the misconduct of officers. The investigation followed an interview with a former police chief from Banning, California, who had reportedly dismissed officers for serious misconduct, only to have their records altered to show voluntary resignations due to clandestine agreements.

    View the story

  • Winner, Goldsmith Book Prize: Trade

    Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century

    Laura Beers

  • Winner, Goldsmith Book Prize: Academic

    Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It

    Adam J. Berinsky

  • Winner, Goldsmith Prize for Explanatory Reporting

    Who Is Government?

    Michael Lewis, Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, W. Kamau Bell | The Washington Post Opinions

  • Winner, Goldsmith Career Award

    Anderson Cooper

Finalists for Goldsmith Investigative Reporting Prize

Judges

Judges for the 2025 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and Goldsmith Prize for Explanatory Reporting were:

Mike Balsamo

National Law Enforcement Editor, The Associated Press

Kathleen Carroll

Former Executive Editor, The Associated Press

Mike Greenfield

Trustee of the Greenfield Foundation; Co-Founder and CEO of Change Research

Kathy Kiely

Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies, Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri

Jerry Mitchell

Investigative Reporter, Mississippi Today; Founder, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting

Carmen Nobel

Program Director & Editor in Chief of The Journalist’s Resource

Sacha Pfeiffer

Correspondent, NPR’s Investigations Team

Andrew Ba Tran

Investigative Data Reporter, The Washington Post

Todd Wallack

Correspondent, WBUR’s Investigative Team

Nancy Gibbs

Director, Shorenstein Center; former Editor in Chief of TIME (chair)

Joel Gurin

President and Founder of the Center for Open Data Enterprise (CODE)

Laura Manley

Executive Director, Shorenstein Center

David Rousseau

Publisher and Executive Director, KFF Health News

Ayushi Roy

Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at HKS; Chief Program Officer of New America’s New Practice Lab

Richard Tofel

Principal, Gallatin Advisory LLC; Former President of ProPublica