Finalists announced for sixth annual Mirror Awards

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications has announced the finalists in the sixth annual Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. The competition drew more than 300 entries. Winners will be announced at a June 13 awards ceremony in New York. 

Finalists, chosen by a group of journalists and journalism educators, are: 

Best Single Article, Traditional/Legacy Media

• Jodi Enda, “Politico, Act II”  (American Journalism Review)
• Felix Gillette, “The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace” (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Adam Lashinsky, “How Apple works: Inside the world’s biggest startup”  (Fortune)
• Gabriel Sherman, “The Elephant in the Green Room” (New York Magazine)
• Emily Steel and Geoffrey A. Fowler, “Big Brands Like Facebook, But They Don’t Like to Pay” (Wall Street Journal) 

Best Single Article, Digital Media

• Joshua Benton, “That was quick: Four lines of code is all it takes for The New York Times’ paywall to come tumbling down” (Nieman Journalism Lab)
• Paul Ford, “Facebook and the Epiphanator: An End to Endings?” (New York Magazine)
• Lauren Kirchner, “AOL Settled with Unpaid ‘Volunteers’ for $15 Million” (Columbia Journalism Review)
• Mallary Jean Tenore, “In real-time, journalists’ tweets contribute to a ‘raw draft’ of history” (Poynter)
• Rhonda Roland Shearer and Malik Ayub Sumbal, “Mrs. Bhutto’s Murder Anniversary Part 1: Troubling Double Standard, American photojournalism’s different treatment of foreign victims” (iMediaEthics) 

Best Profile, Traditional/Legacy Media

• Ken Auletta, “Changing Times” (The New Yorker)
• Felix Gillette, “Demand Media’s Planet of the Algorithms” (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Vanessa Grigoriadis, “Maharishi Arianna” (New York Magazine)
• Evan Osnos, “The Han Dynasty” (The New Yorker) 

Best Profile, Digital Media

• Danny Gold, “The Man Who Makes Money Publishing Your Nude Pics” (The Awl)
• Joe Pompeo, “The road ahead for The Huffington Post: Nine months and a merger later, ‘Capital-J Journalism’ is still a work in progress” (Capital New York)
• Rachel Sklar, “Chelsea Handler Has It Covered” (Change The Ratio) 

Best Commentary, Traditional/Legacy Media

• Eric Alterman (The Nation)

“How Low Will the ‘Washington Post’ Go? ”
“How Rupert Murdoch Buys Friends and Influences People”
“The Agony and Ecstasy—and ‘Disgrace’—of Steve Jobs”

• Syed Irfan Ashraf (The DAWN Media Group/ Individualland)

“Cost of self-censorship”
“Media’s apologetic professionals”
“A synthetic image”

• John Gapper (Financial Times)

“Huffington is right to take the cash”
“The conflict of interest in free news”
“Innovators don’t ignore customers”

• Anna Holmes (The New York Times, The Washington Post)

“The Disposable Woman”
“Anna Holmes on Donald Trump’s Sexism”
“The best TV criticism’s ink is pink, but powerful” 

Best Commentary, Digital Media

• Gavin Polone (Vulture/New York Magazine)

“Polone: Why TV Networks Don’t Need to Worry About Netflix and Hulu’s Original Programming”
“Polone’s Four-Step Plan for Saving NBC”
“Polone’s Hollywood Cost-Cutting Solution No. 2: Stop the Pricey Producer Deals”

• Rem Rieder (American Journalism Review)

“The Incredible Shrinking Rupert”
“The Wall Street Journal Careens off the Rails”
“Passing on Rumors”

• Jack Shafer (Reuters Blog)

“The trial of Stephen Glass”
“Who gets to be anonymous?”
“The apotheosis of Steve Jobs”

• Mallary Jean Tenore (Poynter)

“How accessible do journalists really want to be?”
“Journalists value precise language, except when it comes to describing ‘minorities’”
“Have newsrooms relaxed standards, sanctions for fabrication and plagiarism?”

• Rebecca Traister (Salon.com, The New York Times)

“The Soap Opera Is Dead! Long Live The Soap Opera!”
“‘30 Rock’ takes on feminist hypocrisy — and its own”
“Seeing ‘Bridesmaids’ is a social responsibility” 

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

• Jodi Enda, “The Bloomberg Juggernaut” (American Journalism Review)
• On The Media Team: Brooke Gladstone, Bob Garfield, Katya Rogers, Nazanin Rafsanjani, Jamison York, Mike Vuolo, Sarah Abdurrahman, PJ Vogt, Alex Goldman, “Does NPR Have a Liberal Bias?” (NPR/On The Media)
• Peter Maass, “The Toppling: How the media inflated a minor moment in a long war” (The New Yorker)
• Seth Mnookin, “The Kingdom and the Paywall” (New York Magazine)
• Brian Rosenthal, “In Focus: Investigative Journalism students used questionably ethical reporting tactics, sources say” and “‘Dismantling of a legacy’: The rise and fall of David Protess” (The Daily Northwestern)

The awards ceremony will be held from 11:45 a.m.-2:30 p.m. at The Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue at Central Park South, New York City. CNN’s Anderson Cooper will emcee the event. Information about sponsorship levels and registration is available online. Follow on Twitter via #Mirrors12. 

The Mirror Awards, established by the Newhouse School in 2006, honor the reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit.  

For more information, see http://mirrorawards.com or contact Jean Brooks at 315-443-5711 or jabroo01@syr.edu.