Newhouse Announces Finalists in 2021 Mirror Awards Competition

The Newhouse School announced the finalists in the 2021 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Winners will be announced online June 9 at 7 p.m. ET. Register online.

The finalists, selected by a group of journalists and journalism educators, are:

Best Profile

• Lauren Markham, “The Heat Reporter,” Columbia Journalism Review
• Timothy McLaughlin, “A Newsroom at the Edge of Autocracy,” The Atlantic
• Abe Streep, “For Pueblo,” Columbia Journalism Review

Best Commentary

• Issac J. Bailey, Nieman Reports
  • “George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and One Journalist’s Painfully Honest Self-Examination on Racism”
  • “Is Biden’s Stutter Being Mistaken for ‘Cognitive Decline’?”
  • “Will This Racial Reckoning Finally Force Newsrooms to Listen to Every Staffer’s Voice?”
• Gwen Florio, “The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers,” The Nation
• Andrew Marantz, “The Tom Cotton Op-Ed and the Tired Old ‘Snowflake’ Defense,” The New Yorker
• Julian Brave NoiseCat, “Apocalypse Then and Now,” Columbia Journalism Review

Best Single Article/Story

• Charles Bethea, “What Happens When the News Is Gone?,” The New Yorker
• Deborah Douglas, “Meet the New Black Press,” Nieman Reports
• Andrew Marantz, “Why Facebook Can’t Fix Itself,” The New Yorker
• Joe Pompeo, “The Hedge Fund Vampire that Bleeds Newspapers Dry Now Has the Chicago Tribune by the Throat,” Vanity Fair

John M. Higgins Award for In Depth/Enterprise Reporting

• Susie Banikarim and team, “Enemies of the People: Trump and the Political Press,” Retro Report and Vice
• Micah Loewinger and Hampton Stall with Brooke Gladstone and Katya Rogers, “How Zello Became A Recruitment & Organizing Tool for the Far Right,” On the Media Produced by WNYC Studios
• Craig Silverman with Ryan Mac and Pranav Dixit, BuzzFeed News
  • “Facebook Fired An Employee who Collected Evidence of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment”
  • “‘I Have Blood On My Hands’: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation”
  • “Facebook Gets Paid”
• Tim Schwab, “Journalism’s Gates keepers,” Columbia Journalism Review

Special Topic Category: Best Story on Media Coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Lynsey Chutel, Lauren Harris, Linda Kinstler, Tony Lin, Zainab Sultan and Stephania Taladrid, “Infection and Repression,” Columbia Journalism Review
• Peter Maass, “Hiding COVID 19: How the Trump Administration Suppresses Photography of the Pandemic,” The Intercept
• Nanjala Nyabola, “Africa Is Not Waiting to Be Saved From the Coronavirus,” The Nation

Special Topic Category: Best Story on Media Coverage of the 2020 Presidential Election

• Casey Quackenbush, “Without a Campaign to Cover, Reporters Shift to Covering the Voting Process Itself,” Nieman Reports
• Joan Walsh, “In 2020, Double Standards Are Still Dogging Elizabeth Warren—and All the Women Candidates,” The Nation
• Simon V.Z. Wood, “When the pundits paused,” Columbia Journalism Review

The Mirror Awards are the most important awards for recognizing excellence in media industry reporting. Established by the Newhouse School in 2006, the awards honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. For information about the awards, visit newhouse.syr.edu/mirrorawards or email mirrorawards@syr.edu.