Finalists Announced in 2020 Mirror Awards Competition

The S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications today announced the finalists in the 2020 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Winners will be announced June 11 at mirrorawards.syr.edu.

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

BEST SINGLE ARTICLE/STORY

• Irin Carmon for New York Magazine: “What Was the Washington Post Afraid Of?”

• Joshua Hammer for The New York Times Magazine: “The Journalist vs. the President, With Life on the Line”

• Jane Mayer for The New Yorker: “Trump TV”

BEST PROFILE

• Ryan Bell for Columbia Journalism Review: “Stalking wildfires to capture the horrible beauty of climate change”

• David Freedlander for Politico: “‘I Want Him on Everything’: Meet the Woman Behind the Buttigieg Media Frenzy”

• Molly Langmuir for Elle: “What’s Next For New Yorker Reporter Jane Mayer?”

BEST COMMENTARY

• Andrew Marantz for The New Yorker:
  • “Mark Zuckerberg Still Doesn’t Get It”
  • “Facebook and the ‘Free Speech’ Excuse”
  • “The Dark Side of Techno-Utopianism”

• Jenni Monet for Columbia Journalism Review and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project: “The crisis in covering Indian Country”

• Rebecca Traister for The Cut:
  • “Can You Spot the Fake?”
  • “How I Learned to (Try to) Stop Asking Female Candidates About Sexism”
  • “Politics Is Changing; Why Aren’t the Pundits Who Cover It?”

• David Zurawik for The Baltimore Sun:
  • “As anti-Semitism rises, a ‘numbness’ to hate in our media and society”
  • “Brian Williams is making ‘The 11th Hour’ the most important hour of the cable news night”
  • “Fix the corruption (and crime and schools and blight) and Baltimore’s image will follow”

JOHN M. HIGGINS AWARD FOR BEST IN-DEPTH/ENTERPRISE REPORTING

• Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope for The Nation, in partnership with Columbia Journalism Review:
  • “The Media Are Complacent While the World Burns”
  • “Covering Climate Change in a 1.5-Degree World”
  • “A New Beginning for Climate Reporting”
  • “Has Climate News Coverage Finally Turned a Corner?”

• Sean Gregory and Paul Moakley for Time: “One Year After Surviving a Mass Shooting, the Capital Gazette Journalists Refuse to Be Silenced”

• Molly Webster and Bethel Habte for Radiolab/WNYC Studios: “Right to be Forgotten”

SPECIAL TOPIC CATEGORY: BEST STORY ON MEDIA COVERAGE OF THE TRUMP IMPEACHMENT

• Jon Allsop for Columbia Journalism Review: “Has the impeachment story stalled?”
• Margaret Sullivan for The Washington Post: “The two big flaws of the media’s impeachment coverage — and what went right”
• Joan Walsh for The Nation: “Stop Comparing the Trump Impeachment Probe to Watergate”

SPECIAL TOPIC CATEGORY: BEST STORY ON THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM

• Brent Cunningham for Pacific Standard: “Losing the News”
• Jon Marcus for Nieman Reports: “‘When you see me on the news, you’ll know who I am’”
• Lauren Smiley for Columbia Journalism Review: “As You Like It”

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, contact Amanda Griffin at algri100@syr.edu. For media inquiries, contact Wendy Loughlin at wsloughl@syr.edu.