The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy
The 2026 Goldsmith Academic Book Award honors Eunji Kim, a political scientist at Columbia University, for The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy. Kim’s book tackles a central paradox of contemporary American life: even as income inequality rises and social mobility declines, large numbers of Americans continue to believe fervently in the “American Dream.” Drawing on innovative research, Kim argues that some of the most powerful stories sustaining this belief are not found in editorials or political speeches, but in “success-oriented” entertainment such as American Idol, Shark Tank, and America’s Got Talent. These programs function as modern Horatio Alger tales, repeatedly dramatizing the idea that grit and talent alone separate winners from losers, that structural barriers can be overcome, and that the system is fundamentally fair because ordinary people really do “win big.” Kim shows that exposure to these rags-to-riches narratives strengthens viewers’ faith in upward mobility and, in turn, increases their acceptance of economic inequality and weakens support for the social safety net. The American Mirage offers a compelling and unsettling account of how popular culture shapes political beliefs, making it a distinguished contribution to our understanding of media, democracy, and inequality.
Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford
The 2026 Goldsmith Trade Book Award honors Carla Kaplan, a professor at Northeastern University, for Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford. Kaplan’s vivid biography recounts the extraordinary life of Jessica “Decca” Mitford, the rebel Mitford sister who broke with her aristocratic, fascist-leaning family to embrace radical politics and a career in crusading journalism. In the second half of the twentieth century, Mitford became one of America’s most celebrated muckrakers, exposing abuses in prisons, hospitals, correspondence schools, prosecutors’ offices, and beyond. Her landmark 1963 bestseller, The American Way of Death, revealed predatory practices in the funeral industry and helped spur consumer-protection reforms. Troublemaker is both a page-turning life story—from a British estate to the Spanish Civil War to Mitford’s fearless reporting in the United States—and a powerful account of how unapologetically adversarial journalism can challenge entrenched institutions and protect the public.
Power Struggle: What Stalled the Northwest’s Push for Green Energy?
Produced in partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, Power Struggle explains why states in the Pacific Northwest — despite their portrayal as leaders in green energy — rank near the bottom of the country for the growth of renewable power. This reporting team broke down green energy production and its relationship to the nation’s electrical grid and explained how the Northwest region’s electrical grid was incapable of hooking up all the new wind and solar farms that are needed to reduce fossil fuel use. The series was eye-opening to local lawmakers and served as a catalyst for reform.
Exposed and Expendable
As wildfires swept through Los Angeles in January 2025, New York Times reporter Hannah Dreier noticed something strange – firefighters were working bare-faced for days on end, while residents were told to wear masks or stay indoors to protect themselves from dangerous air pollutants.
In over 400 interviews, public records requests to eight agencies, an analysis of thousands of pages of individual medical and service records, and the creation of a database tracking every national crew deployment over the past two decades, Dreier discovered the dramatic and lasting consequences that firefighters were facing from fighting wildfires without protection, and that the Forest Service had understood the dangers of smoke for decades, but downplayed the risk.
As a result of the reporting, Congress passed a bipartisan law, signed in December 2025, that requires the government to pay $450,000 to wildland firefighters who become disabled or die from smoke-related cancers. Five additional bills prompted by this reporting are still pending at the federal level, and it has also spurred state-level spending and regulation in California, as well as new OSHA and Forest Service protections for wildland firefighters, including the reversal of the Forest Service’s decades-long ban on masks.
Jeffrey Goldberg
Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic and is the moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic on PBS. He joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and in 2016 was named editor in chief, the 15th person to serve as editor in The Atlantic’s 168-year history. During his editorship, The Atlantic has set new audience and subscription records, and won its first-ever Pulitzer Prizes. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, The Atlantic received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the top award in the industry.
Before joining The Atlantic, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent and then the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. Earlier in his career, he was a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He began his career as a police reporter for The Washington Post. Goldberg is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror and On Heroism:McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump. A former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, he also served as a public-policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and as the distinguished visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Goldberg is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for Reporting; the Daniel Pearl Award for Reporting; the Overseas Press Club’s award for human-rights reporting; the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Prize for best investigative reporting.
“Jeffrey has steered a storied institution through a period of immense disruption and elevated The Atlantic as a critical resource for investigation, analysis, and ideas. At a time when the entire industry is navigating new ethical and editorial challenges, Jeffrey’s excellence and enterprise both as a journalist and editorial leader serves as a beacon for us all.” – Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs
Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century
Laura Beers, a British history professor at American University, critically examines Orwell’s enduring relevance through issues like populism, tyranny, and inequality, while challenging the obsession with his famed works, Animal Farm and 1984. She dissects Orwell’s critique of capitalism’s social prejudices and inequality, highlighting his democratic socialism and defense of individual liberty. Orwell’s experience in the Spanish Civil War convinced him that violence sometimes has a role in social change but argued that equality ultimately rests on acts aimed at creating social unity. Beers’ analysis seeks to clarify Orwell’s writings in the context of modern events, providing insights that policymakers and political activists would be wise to heed.
Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It
Adam Berinsky, an MIT political scientist, tackles the challenge of political rumors – the factually incorrect claims, such as Obama’s birth abroad, that come to be widely believed. He explores why such rumors persist, who believes them, and how to combat them, using original survey and experimental data. He identifies conspiratorial thinking and strong partisan loyalties as key factors in the dissemination of such claims while suggesting remedial efforts should target not only diehard believers but also those who might be tempted to accept them. Emphasizing public vulnerability to misinformation, Berinsky calls for attention to both the message and the messenger, advocating for credible sources to debunk falsehoods.
Who Is Government?
The inaugural Goldsmith Explanatory Prize for reporting on government is awarded to The Washington Post Opinions series “Who Is Government?” created by Michael Lewis.
Seven writers — Michael Lewis, Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell — were “set loose on the federal bureaucracy” and given the same brief: find a story about public service. Each piece, taken together, helped shine a light on the value of government work and the dedicated civil servants that are rarely written about or celebrated:
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. This tactic allowed these officers to seek employment elsewhere without disclosing prior allegations.
Reporters Katey Rusch and Casey Smith embarked on a rigorous journey, submitting over a thousand public records requests across the state, which revealed more than 300 such “clean-record agreements.” Many settlements contained strict confidentiality terms and financial penalties for disclosure, complicating the release of records. Furthermore, the investigation exposed the misuse of the California disability pension system, with some agreements promising officers a tax-free disability retirement under suspect circumstances.
The series has sparked significant impact. Public outcry has driven California legislators to consider banning these agreements, while the California Public Employees’ Retirement System is investigating pension cases highlighted by the series for possible revocation. Multiple officers have lost their positions or face further scrutiny, and the ACLU of Southern California added the elimination of these agreements to its legislative agenda. Media outlets and experts have lauded the investigation, recognizing its groundbreaking revelations into the shielded operations within law enforcement systems.
Image used here courtesy of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Anderson Cooper
Anderson Cooper is the winner of the 2025 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism.
Anderson Cooper is the anchor of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360°, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, and his podcast All There Is with Anderson Cooper, and is a regular correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes.
Since the start of his career in 1992, Cooper has worked in nearly eighty countries and covered major news events around the world, often reporting from the scene. Cooper has also played a pivotal role in CNN’s political and election coverage. He has anchored from conventions and moderated several presidential primary debates and town halls. In 2016, Cooper was selected by the Committee On Presidential Debates to co-moderate one of the three debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
At CNN and 60 Minutes, Cooper has won a number of major journalism awards. He helped lead CNN’s Peabody Award-winning coverage of Hurricane Katrina and duPont Award-winning coverage of the 2004 tsunami. Additionally, he has been awarded twenty-three Emmy Awards, including two for his coverage of the earthquake in Haiti, and an Edward R. Murrow Award. All four of Cooper’s books have topped the New York Times Best-seller List, including his most recent, Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune.
Before joining CNN, Cooper was an ABC News correspondent and host of the network’s reality program The Mole. Cooper anchored ABC’s overnight newscast World News Now, and was a correspondent for World News Tonight as well as 20/20. Cooper joined ABC from Channel One News, where he served as chief international correspondent. During that time, he reported and produced stories, from conflicts in Bosnia, Cambodia, Haiti, Israel, Myanmar, Russia, Rwanda, Somalia, and South Africa. Cooper graduated from Yale University in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science. He also studied Vietnamese at the University of Hanoi.
“Year after year, Anderson Cooper has navigated the toughest stories and kept viewers informed while providing incisive analysis of the day’s events. Whether at the anchor desk or in the field, Anderson is an intrepid journalist and a natural storyteller capable of grilling a public official one minute and comforting a displaced refugee the next.”
