Finalists Announced in Newhouse School’s 10th Annual Mirror Awards Competition

The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications has announced the finalists in the 2016 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony June 9 in New York City.

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

Best Single Article—Traditional/Legacy Media

• “Inside the Hack of the Century” (PDF) by Peter Elkind (Fortune)
• “The Bot Bubble: How Click Farms Have Inflated Social Media Currency” by Doug Bock Clark (New Republic)
• “Despite Violence, Journalists in Mexico Innovate to Report” by Monica Campbell (Nieman Reports)
• “(Actually) True War Stories at NBC News” by Gabriel Sherman (New York magazine)
• “How to Lose Friends and Influence” (PDF) by Michal Lev-Ram (Fortune)

Best Single Article—Digital Media

• “The First-Person Industrial Complex” by Laura Bennett (Slate)
• “The day that changed WDBJ” by Brian Stelter (CNN)
• “Automation in the Newsroom” by Celeste LeCompte (Nieman Reports)
• “Sharing the Viewfinder: Instagram as a Medium for Documentary Photography” by Anastasia Taylor-Lind (Nieman Reports)
• “Crackdown On Stock Market Reporting Shakes China’s Financial Journalists” by Duncan Hewitt (International Business Times)
• “Destroyed by the Espionage Act” by Peter Maass and Stephen Maing (The Intercept)

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

• “I Want My MTV” by Matthew Billy (Between the Liner Notes)
• “Victims’ parents want ‘no notoriety’ for mass shooters” by Brian Stelter and the staff of Reliable Sources (CNN)
• “Haunted by Columbine” by Erik German, Olivia Katrandjian and team (Retro Report)

Best Profile

• “Terry Gross and the Art of Opening Up” by Susan Burton (The New York Times)
• “Bullsh*t” by Jessica Pressler (New York magazine)
• “Anchorman: The Legend of Don Lemon” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (GQ)
• “How Jason Whitlock Is Poisoning ESPN’s ‘Black Grantland’” by Greg Howard (Deadspin)

Best Commentary

• “Don’t Settle: The Journalist in the Shadow of the Commercial Web” by Guy Patrick Cunningham (Los Angeles Review of Books)
• “The Bill Cosby Scandal, Brought to You by YouTube” by James Wolcott (Vanity Fair)
• “A Dumb Job” by Frank Rich (New York magazine)
• “Why Do We Humanize White Guys Who Kill People?” by Rebecca Traister (New York magazine)
• Commentary on Baltimore violence by David Zurawik (The Baltimore Sun)
  • “In the media, divergent perspectives on Baltimore”
  • “Video technology changes the evidence, maybe society”
  • “Beefed-up media capture images of Baltimore burning for world to see”

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

• “The Hurricane Station” by Rajini Vaidyanathan (BBC News)
• “What Do We Really Know About Osama bin Laden’s Death?” by Jonathan Mahler (The New York Times)
• “An Exclusive Look at Sony’s Hacking Saga” by Mark Seal (Vanity Fair)
• “Charlie Hebdo’s Multi-Million-Dollar Pile of Tragedy Money” by Roger Cohen (Vanity Fair)
• “What Was New York Times Reporter James Risen’s Seven-Year Legal Battle Really For?” by Sarah Ellison (Vanity Fair)

The awards ceremony will be held Thursday, June 9, from 11:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., at Cipriani 42nd Street, 110 E. 42nd St., New York City. In addition to the juried awards, the Fred Dressler Leadership Award and the i-3 award for impact, innovation and influence will be presented by the Newhouse School. Tickets and tables may be purchased online at http://mirrorawards.com. Follow on Twitter at #Mirrors16.

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 ticket and table sales for the ceremony, contact Amanda Griffin at 315-443-7982 or algri100@syr.edu. For media inquiries, contact Wendy Loughlin at 315-443-2785 or wsloughl@syr.edu.