Honors a single story or series that uncovered significant and impactful news based on the reporters’ own investigation and which advances and serves the public interest.

Jump to:

• Micro Division — Winner: Voices of Monterey Bay
• Small Division — Winner: InvestigateWest
• Medium Division — Winner: Injustice Watch
• Large Division — Winner: The Marshall Project and The New York Times

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Best Investigative Journalism Award – Micro division

Voices of Monterey Bay

Suspicious King City traffic death was never truly investigated by Royal Calkins

Voices of Monterey Bay’s Royal Calkins spent about a year investigating the death of a woman who was hit by an SUV while walking down the middle of a dark frontage road. About a week after the incident, local law enforcement declared the woman’s death an accident, and for a year or more gave the case only “sporadic and superficial attention.” But Calkins’ investigation found there was much more to the story. Judges called Calkins’ work “a shining example of accountability journalism” and a “great story, well-reported, and well-told.”

Read the Winning Work

Suspicious King City traffic death was never truly investigated

Una muerte sospechosa en King City nunca fue realmente investigada

Sheriff’s Office reopens ‘lost’ King City death case

Finalists

• Tucson Sentinel, Pima Sheriff’s Dep’t failed to notify family of dead inmate for 2.5 months, Natalie Robbins, Dylan Smith
• Voices of Monterey Bay, Pain, death and secrets at the Monterey County Jail, Royal Calkins

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Best Investigative Journalism Award – Small division

InvestigateWest

The Cruelest Lie: How Idaho allows rape, abuse and cruelty to flourish inside the state’s youth residential facilities by Wilson Criscione

Reporting from InvestigateWest exposed allegations of child abuse and neglect at state-licensed residential treatment facilities for youths in Idaho. The programs “capitalize on a nationwide foster care shortage and states’ failures to provide mental health treatment to youths,” Wilson Criscione reported. 

One judge said: “Criscione has the receipts — not only the compelling, horrific narrative accounts but intensively researched data backing up survivor’s stories and, sadly, making clear that while each is unique, they’re all common to a criminally faulted system — a system changed by the cleansing light of investigative reporting.”

Read the Winning Work

The Cruelest Lie

Finalists

• The Appeal, Locked In, Priced Out, Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, Ethan Corey
• The Garrison Project, Baltimore police unit under fire for deadly shootings, questionable stops, Brandon Soderberg
• The Journal, What happened inside Wichita’s emergency winter homeless shelter, Stefania Lugli
• The Lund Report, University of Oregon Catalyst Journalism Project, Oregon Public Broadcasting, Unsupported: Addiction prevention in Oregon classrooms, Emily Green, Elizabeth Yost, Lillian Mongeau Hughes

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Best Investigative Journalism Award – Medium division

Injustice Watch

Exploited Elders by David Jackson

To produce a four-part series about the financial exploitation of the elderly, Injustice Watch “reviewed thousands of pages of records, analyzed previously unpublished federal data, and interviewed more than 50 victims, family members, and experts.” The project revealed how, instead of protecting older adults from financial exploitation, an Illinois system “leaves them more vulnerable to harm and isolation.” David Jackson’s reporting is “compulsively readable and built on meticulous and eye-opening reporting,” one judge wrote. Another said the work “represents the highest calling of investigative journalism.”

Read the Winning Work

In Illinois, a system meant to protect against elder financial exploitation is failing 

Older Black Americans are at higher risk for financial exploitation

Probate court cases illustrate Illinois’ broken adult protection system

Citi wealth adviser accused of steering older clients into money-losing film projects

Finalists

• New Bedford Light, Blue Harvest stories
• The Connecticut Mirror, How the battle for absentee ballots defined the Bridgeport election, Andrew Brown, José Luis Martínez, Katy Golvala, Dave Altimari
• Type Investigations, WWNO, Louisiana Law Gives Judges a Financial Incentive to Set High Bail and Secure Convictions, Garrett Hazelwood

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Best Investigative Journalism Award – Large division

The Marshall Project and The New York Times

How New York’s Abusive Guards Keep Their Jobs by Joseph Neff, Alysia Santo, Tom Meagher, Ilica Mahajan

The Marshall Project examined more than 12 years of employee discipline data from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and hundreds of prisoner lawsuits — records that revealed that 90% of the time, the state discipline system fails to hold guards accountable for attacking the people in their custody. The news outlets’ investigation “exemplifies in-depth reporting and holding power to account,” a judge wrote. “The severe abuse and institutional failures detailed within such a powerful state system backed up by extensive documentation and sourcing made it stand above the rest.”

Read the Winning Work

In New York Prisons, Guards Who Brutalize Prisoners Rarely Get Fired

How a ‘Blue Wall’ Inside New York State Prisons Protects Abusive Guards

‘A Crazy System’: How Arbitration Returns Abusive Guards to New York Prisons

How We Investigated Abuse by Prison Guards in New York

How We Investigated Abusive Prison Guards Getting Their Jobs Back in New York

New York Prison Employee Discipline Data

Bill Would Change How New York Disciplines Abusive Prison Guards

Finalists

• CalMatters, California’s Risky Bet on Rehab, Byrhonda Lyons
• Reveal and the Associated Press, Hidden Confessions of the Mormon Church, Michael Rezendes, Jason Dearen
• The Texas Tribune, Open Campus, Turmoil at Texas A&M University System, Kate McGee, James Barragán
• The Trace, Shot by a Civilian Wielding a Police Gun, Champe Barton, Alain Stephens, Chris Hacker, Stephen Stock, Amy Corral, Nicole Vap