Newhouse Announces Finalists in 2014 Mirror Awards Competition

The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications has announced the finalists in the 2014 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on June 4 in New York City.

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.

The finalists, chosen from a pool of more than 350 entries by a group of journalists and journalism educators, are:

Best Single Article—Traditional/Legacy Media

• “The Trouble at Bloomberg” by Peter Elkind (Fortune)

• “Local Story” by Rachel Aviv (The New Yorker)

• “How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets” by Peter Maass (The New York Times)

• “In Mexico, fears for democracy as threatened journalists curtail coverage” by Tim Johnson (McClatchy DC)

Best Single Article—Digital Media

• “President Obama, off the record” by Dylan Byers (Politico)

• “How the Toronto Star is telling the Rob Ford story” by Kristen Hare (Poynter)

• “Politico’s Mike Allen, native advertising pioneer” by Erik Wemple (The Washington Post)

• “Instead of shoehorning it in, NowThis News is building video content that fits in where the audience lives” by Caroline O’Donovan (Nieman Journalism Lab)

Best Single Story—Radio, Television, Cable or Online Broadcast Media

• “The Manti Te’o Story: Why The News Media Let Its Guard Down” by David Folkenflik (NPR)

• “Taking the Lid Off the McDonald’s Coffee Case”  by Retro Report (Bonnie Bertram, producer)

• “The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook” by Brooke Gladstone and On The Media

• “I posed as a Prostitute in a Turkish Brothel” by Mimi Chakarova (Vice)

Best Profile—Traditional/Legacy or Digital Media

• “Who Killed Michael Hastings?” by Benjamin Wallace (New York magazine)

• “The Bad-Boy Brand” by Lizzie Widdicombe (The New Yorker)

• “Luke Russert is the Golden Boy of This Town” by Noreen Malone (New Republic)

• “The Operator” by Michael Specter (The New Yorker)

• “Business Outsider” by Ken Auletta (The New Yorker)

• “Tom Freston, Runaway Mogul” by Joe Hagan (Men’s Journal)

Best Commentary—Traditional/Legacy Media

• Michael Meyer (Columbia Journalism Review)
  • False fronts
  • Unfinished business
  • News havens

• Eric Alterman (The Nation)
  • The Passion and Eloquence of Anthony Lewis
  • The MSM and the Snowden Affair: Where True Loyalty Lies
  • The Washington Post’s Dubious Salvation

• Syed Irfan Ashraf (Dawn, Express Tribune, British Journalism Review)
  • Manufacture of the militant discourse
  • Life is cheap in Pakistan — for journalists
  • Malala: a question for us all

Best Commentary – Digital Media

• Jina Moore (Salon, Columbia Journalism Review, The Atlantic)
  • Don’t blame the victim, or the photographer
  • Documenting domestic violence
  • ‘South African Violence’ Only Explains the Pistorius Case If He’s Not Guilty

• Rachel Sklar (LinkedIn, Medium)
  • The Riptide of Titstare
  • GoldieBlox vs. Beastie Boys
  • To Pay or Not To Pay (or Get Paid) For Content

• David Zurawik (The Baltimore Sun)
  • Of course Al Jazeera has a bias, but it’s not what most critics think
  • Why I stopped trusting TV history – totally
  • After decades of belief, this year I lost faith in ‘60 Minutes,’ CNN

• Choire Sicha (The Awl)
  • Take A Minute To Watch The New Way We Make Web Headlines Now
  • The Unverified
  • The Big Secret Twitter Doesn’t Want You To Know That Might Be Killing You

John M. Higgins Award for Best In-Depth/Enterprise Reporting

• “Combat Journalism” by Frank Greve (CQ Researcher)

• “Ferndale Gothic” by Ryan Burns (The North Coast Journal)

• “Manti Te’o’s Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax” by Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey (Deadspin)

An awards ceremony will be held 11:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, June 4, at Cipriani, 110 E. 42nd St., New York City. Registration is available online. Follow on Twitter at #Mirrors14.

David Zaslav, president and CEO of Discovery Communications, will be honored with the Fred Dressler Leadership Award. Re/code’s Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg will receive the i-3 award for impact, innovation and influence.

For information about ticket and table sales for the ceremony, contact Sarah Hope at 315.443.5711 or mirror@syr.edu. For media inquiries, contact Wendy Loughlin at 315.443.2785 or wsloughl@syr.edu.