Journalism Excellence Awards by Subject 2022
(Works Produced in 2021)
Excellence in Investigative Reporting: Saurabh Datar, Shannon Dooling, Beth Healy, Christine Willmsen, and Sarah Blustain
Excellence in Sports Reporting: Wufei Yu
Excellence in Science/Environment/Health Reporting: Yangyang Cheng
Excellence in Arts and Culture/Entertainment Reporting: “Still Standing” Team (Barbara Corbellini Duarte, Meg Teckman-Fullard, Julia Press, Susumu Miyazu, Amelia Kosciulek, Liz Kraker, Kantaro Komiya, Mark Abadi, Daniel Allen, Erica Berenstein, Yasser Abu Wazna, Havovi Cooper, Reem Makhoul, Dylan Barth, Prakhar Deep Jain, and Adarsh Singh)
Excellence in Political Reporting: Rishika Dugyala, Beatrice Jin and Peter Canellos
Excellence in International Reporting: Neeti Upadhye
Excellence in Pacific Islander Reporting: Robert Perez
Excellence in Business/Consumer/Tech Reporting: Brian X. Chen
Excellence in Commentary/Op-Ed/Perspective: Harry Mok
Excellence in Investigative Reporting - Works Produced in 2021
ABOUT THE PROJECT: It’s a broken system of criminal justice that preys on thousands of poor people and those not guilty, taking their money to fund law enforcement in Massachusetts. It’s part of a nationwide law enforcement scheme known as civil forfeiture. Simply put, police and prosecutors who suspect someone is connected to a drug crime can take someone’s cash, keep it and later spend it, without ever charging or convicting the person of a crime.
Yet it was anything but simple for WBUR and ProPublica to investigate. Our stories revealed how law enforcement possibly violated people’s civil rights by using this antiquated state law, considered the worst in the nation. Since 2000, states and the federal government have captured more than $68 billion in assets, according to the Institute for Justice. WBUR’s investigative reporting uncovered the local effects, gave a voice to victims and held those responsible to account. We believe it’s a perfect example of broadening the public’s understanding of the law and its impact, worthy of the AAJA Excellence in Investigative Reporting.
It has changed policies in one county already. A hearing is scheduled to investigate Boston police purchases, meanwhile, state legislators are demanding changes to the law. The breadth of the analysis and reporting was revelatory to the public, lawyers and elected officials because it had never been done by any media organization in the past. Tracking down the story took the entire resources of WBUR’s four-person investigative team and the editorial support of ProPublica.
RUNNER-UP: Eileen Guo, Karen Hao, Jess Aloe, “The US crackdown on Chinese economic espionage is a mess. We have the data to show it.” (1 / 2 / 3), MIT Technology Review
Saurabh Datar
(Senior Investigative Data Reporter)
SAURABH DATAR is a senior data reporter for WBUR, where he uses data, public records and computational methods to tell stories. He also builds data visualizations for the investigative unit, and collaborates with other reporters in the newsroom on various projects. Datar joined WBUR in 2020 from the Boston Globe, where he worked with the Spotlight team reporting on inequities in death in Massachusetts and investigating the transportation gridlock in Boston. He also contributed data analysis and graphics for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize winner “Blind Spot”, as well as building data visualizations and digital presentations for several other projects.
Shannon Dooling
(Senior Investigative Data Reporter)
SHANNON DOOLING is an investigative reporter for WBUR, working in collaboration with ProPublica. Her stories focus on immigration and criminal justice, and her work can be heard nationally on NPR and Here & Now. In 2019, she broke the national news story about the Trump administration's efforts to dismantle a humanitarian immigration process designed to allow seriously ill immigrants to stay in the U.S. for medical treatment. She’s also shed light on how Boston police share information with federal immigration officials. Her reporting has won several Edward R. Murrow awards, including the 2019 awards for continuing coverage and investigative reporting.
Beth Healy
(Senior Investigative Reporter)
BETH HEALY is a senior investigative reporter for WBUR. She co-wrote the team's series, "Dying on the Sheriff's Watch," which examined deaths resulting from poor health care at Massachusetts county jails and won a national Edward R. Murrow award. The team also covered price-gouging and opportunism in sales of COVID medical masks, stories that won a national Headliner award. Healy joined WBUR in 2019 after 19 years at the Boston Globe, where she was twice a member of the award-winning Spotlight Team
Christine Wilmsen
(Investigations Editor)
CHRISTINE WILLMSEN leads the investigative unit of WBUR. Prior to WBUR, Willmsen worked at the Seattle Times for 16 years, writing investigative stories about social injustice, government malfeasance, environmental issues and criminal justice. She was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the investigative, public service and breaking news categories and was on the reporting team that won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Other national awards she has won include Scripps Howard Public Service Award, Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award and Investigative Reporters and Editors Award.
Sarah Blustain
(Deputy Editor, Local)
SARAH BLUSTAIN is deputy editor, local. In this role, she helps oversee ProPublica’s local journalism initiatives, including the Local Reporting Network. She came to ProPublica from Type Investigations, where for seven years she spearheaded longform investigative projects for the nonprofit newsroom. At Type Investigations, Blustain oversaw award-winning projects that resulted in congressional hearings and resignations, legislative changes and canceled public contracts. Central themes of her editorial work have included corporate accountability, environmental degradation, conflict zone reporting, reproductive rights and women’s issues more broadly. She also established newsroom protocols; negotiated comp.
Excellence in Sports Reporting - Works Produced in 2021
Wufei Yu and Will Ford, “172 Runners Started This Ultramarathon - 21 Of Them Never Came Back,” Runnersworld
ABOUT THE PROJECT: The story was picked up by long-form writing aggregators like Longreads and The Sunday Long Read. The Sunday Long Read lauded the piece as such: In the genre of Into Thin Air and Snowfall, the writers take us into the psyches of runners as they begin what would become a deadly race in China’s Yellow River Stone Forest. Part of what makes this so compelling is the reporting for point of view: “Yan’s cheeks were becoming numb. She was ascending to the third checkpoint and rain lashed the trail, buffeted by gusts of wind. The rock trail was slick as ice, and led perilously close to sheer cliff edges.” The story also won the sports section of The Sunday Long Read Best of 2021 accolades. It was also the most clicked sports story that was included in TSLR newsletters in 2021. As for the Runner's World Magazine, the story attracted more than 54,000 unique viewers, with an average engagement time of three minutes - both way above the magazine's average numbers. The story was among the top 20 articles the magazine had published over the three-month timespan. The story was published worldwide in the Runner's World's print magazine editions in different countries, such as the U.K., Italy, Australia&New Zealand and so on, my editor Rojek Taylor said.
RUNNER-UP: Barbara Corbellini Duarte & Edris Lutfi, “Why MMA Fighters in Afghanistan Fear The Return of the Taliban,” Insider News
Wufei Yu
Born and raised in Beijing, WUFEI YU is an English-Chinese bilingual journalist. He often writes about sports, outdoor adventures, the environment and climate, the Western U.S. and New Mexico, his second home.
Will Ford
WILL FORD is a writer and journalist based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work has appeared in Harper's, The Washington Post, Outside Magazine, Politico, High Country News, and many other publications. Previously, he worked in Beijing as writer, teacher, and translator.
Excellence in Science/Environment/Health Reporting - Works Produced in 2021
Yangyang Cheng, “We’re Not Ready for the Next Pandemic,” Vice
ABOUT THE PROJECT: Compared with the plethora of pieces that have been written about the search for the origins of Covid-19, this essay is unique in its scope and perspective. The author, a Chinese-born, US-based physicist and legal scholar with over a decade of experience working in international scientific collaborations, brings forth her scientific background, deep understanding of Chinese politics and US-China relations, as well as expertise on international law and bioethics. The reporting cuts through the noise to offer a clear picture and sharp analysis on what the WHO mission in Wuhan was and was not, what went wrong and what was accomplished at each stage, and where expectations from the public, policymakers, and the scientific community diverged and what led to these differences. More importantly, this piece places the search and the Chinese government’s response into a global and historical context. Using examples from past epidemics, approaches from other governments, and relevant national and international laws, the piece reaches beyond blaming individual institutions or governments to reveal faults in the current international system. With a global readership in the tens of thousands, this essay has received high praise from prominent scientists and public health experts. Virologist Dr. Kristian G. Anderson of the Scripps Institute in the US called it “a very insightful article that fleshes out some of the most misunderstood aspects of the WHO mission, China's response, and the ongoing power struggle that has engulfed scientific enquiry” and “(h)ighly recommend this as a #mustread.” Virologist Dr. Angela Rasmussen of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada called it “(m)ost thoughtful piece on origins I've read thus far.” The piece has also been read and shared by several members of the WHO’s mission in Wuhan, including co-lead Danish scientist Dr. Peter Ben Embarek.
RUNNER-UP: Rachel Ramirez, “This Colorado community was proof an all-electric, net-zero future is possible. Now that vision is under siege,” CNN
Yangyang Cheng
Yangyang Cheng is a Research Scholar in Law and Fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center, where her work focuses on the development of science and technology in China and US-China relations. Her essays on these and related topics have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, WIRED, MIT Technology Review, VICE, and many other publications. Born and raised in China and trained as a particle physicist, Cheng worked on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for over a decade, most recently at Cornell University and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
Yangyang Cheng accepts the 2021 Excellence in Science/Health/Environment Reporting Award.
Excellence in Arts and Entertainment Reporting - Works Produced in 2021
“Still Standing” Team (Barbara Corbellini Duarte, Meg Teckman-Fullard, Julia Press, Susumu Miyazu, Amelia Kosciulek, Liz Kraker, Kantaro Komiya, Mark Abadi, Daniel Allen, Erica Berenstein, Yasser Abu Wazna, Havovi Cooper, Reem Makhoul, Dylan Barth, Prakhar Deep Jain, and Adarsh Singh), Series: “Still Standing,” Works: “How One of Japan's Oldest Businesses Has Served Roasted Mochi for Over 1,000 Years”; “How Families in India are Keeping a 500-Year-Old Liquor Tradition Alive”; “How One Family Kept a Palestinian Pottery Tradition Alive in Gaza”; Insider Inc./YouTube
ABOUT THE PROJECT: "Still Standing" tells highly visual stories about industries and individuals staying afloat despite the odds. Whether it's traditional methods threatened by modernization, or centuries-old family businesses adapting to change, we show how and why they are still around. We aim to bring a global audience to our stories that will resonate with people who are deeply familiar with the cultures and businesses we profile, as well as inspire those who may have never known that such a thing existed in the first place. We also have made a material impact in the lives of some of the people we profiled. Several of the small operations that were struggling have found a wealth of new customers or gained business partners: like Saied Tarakhan, a traditional papyrus artist in Egypt, or Mohammed Ibrahim, a metalworker in India. Others, like Giorgos Hatziparaskos, an 86-year-old baker in Greece, have become local heroes. We've told stories from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and South America, and nearly every episode has had millions of views. The "Still Standing" series showcases just how fragile some of these industries are with disinterest from younger generations, mass production overshadowing artisan work, and of course over the past year, the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. We strive to preserve these people's stories and enshrine them in digital history to ensure that the techniques and culture are never truly forgotten.
RUNNER-UP: Tiffany Liou, “Spirit of Vietnam,” WFAA
Barbara Corbellini Duarte
BARBARA CORBELLINI DUARTE is the Deputy Executive Producer Insider’s News & Documentary team. She joined the company from the Sun Sentinel, where she worked as a multimedia journalist. She has published works in The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, Naples Daily News, NBC Latino and The New York Times Student Journalism Insitute. She's a native of Brazil and holds a BA from Florida International University.
Excellence in Political Reporting - Works Produced in 2021
Rishika Dugyala, Beatrice Jin and Peter Canellos, "Trauma and Trump make Asian American voters a more cohesive bloc, new poll reveals," POLITICO
ABOUT THE PROJECT: Over 2021, POLITICO began tracking the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes, the rise of AAPI power in key battleground states — and how this duality would affect voting behavior going forward. But we knew the importance of grounding any analysis of AAPI politics in hard data, drawn from the community itself. So we commissioned an exclusive poll with our partner Morning Consult and spent months crafting one of the most comprehensive surveys of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults in the country to date. We obtained a sample size large enough to break down responses by age, generation (first gen, second gen, third gen), citizenship, political ideology, and ethnicity. This was important to us and this priority was reflected in the story we eventually published: The sheer number of cross sections of the AAPI community was visually emphasized. Our poll yielded several key findings: Despite the longstanding diversity of political views and policy priorities among AAPI adults, trauma and the influence of former president Donald Trump had created an unprecedented solidarity. Two in 10 adults were now more likely to identify with the broader “AAPI” label than they were pre-pandemic, a notable shift for a racial group that tends to be “nationality-first.” This movement in identity will be key to building electoral clout and gaining campaign attention, experts told us.
The impact of this key finding — along with some of our other takeaways that AAPI adults believe violence and discrimination are major threats, blame Donald Trump and trust Democrats more than Republicans with major policy priorities — was immediately clear. A member of the GOP communications team reached out to us to learn more about the findings and stay in touch for future stories. The DNC and DCCC blasted the poll and the story out to their individual listservs. AAPI-centered political organizations (e.g. AAPI Victory Alliance, APIAVote and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund) shared the piece, as did politicians like Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY). (Even AAJA’s press team tweeted that the piece was an important read.) We reached the exact political audience we were aiming to reach. In addition, the story performed incredibly well metrics-wise, which shows the power of leveraging alternative story formats and data visualizations to keep readers engaged. We saw four times the unique visitors than the average for a POLITICO story and double the engaged reading time. We also partnered with our race and identity newsletter, The Recast, to do a special weekend send for its nearly 25,000 subscribers. We saw one of the highest open rates of the month (October) for that edition.
RUNNER-UP: Carmen Vicencio, "America ReFramed: Brooklyn Inshallah," WORLD Channel, American Documentary, Inc.
Rishika Dugyala
(Digital Strategy Editor)
RISHIKA DUGYALA is a digital strategy editor at POLITICO. She helped workshop and launch The Recast, a twice-weekly race/identity/politics newsletter that has since expanded to include live events, editorial projects and more. Rishika still works on the newsletter today — but she also helps pitch and project manage enterprise stories with teams across the newsroom. She has previously written for Reuters, The Texas Tribune and the San Francisco Public Press.
BEATRICE JIN
(Graphics Reporter)
PETER CANELLOS
(Managing Editor, Enterprise)
Excellence in Political Reporting - Works Produced in 2021
Neeti Upadhye, “Inside A Secret Safe House for Dalit Rape Survivors,” Brut India
ABOUT THE PROJECT: Media often swarms to cover India’s horrific sexual assaults, but no one stays to see what becomes of these women’s lives afterwards. For my documentary, I was given exclusive access to a secret safe house established to protect survivors of caste-based sexual violence. The film garnered more than half a million views and 2,100 comments on YouTube, performing better than 90% of Brut India’s documentaries. The film was lauded for “showing what mainstream media wouldn’t” and started a much-needed conversation around why lower-caste women are the most vulnerable community in the country. The film was screened in various cities in the U.S. and had a profound impact on the subject’s lives. Viewers organically raised more than $5,000 USD for Manisha’s foundation, which allowed her to support several rape victims and fund law school for two of the survivors.
RUNNER-UP: Thanh-Giang H. Nguyen, “Father of Essex truck victim: I’d send my children from Vietnam again” (1 / 2 / 3), Radio Free Asia Vietnamese Service
Neeti Upadhye
(Supervising Producer of Video, The Washington Post)
NEETI UPADHYE is an award-winning multimedia journalist with a decade of experience in everything from print to VR storytelling. She currently leads a small global video team at The Washington Post. Prior jobs include Brut India, The New York Times, AAJA, NowThis, and the Democrat and Chronicle. Neeti recently returned to the Bay Area after a four-year stint making documentaries in India. She is most passionate about covering social justice and her goal is to help make the future of news more inclusive.
Neeti Upadhye accepts the 2022 Excellence in International Reporting Award.
Excellence in Pacific Islander Reporting - Works Produced in 2021
ABOUT THE PROJECT: When reporters Rob Perez and Agnel Philip discovered that Congress had been approving special deals that undermined a land trust to help Native Hawaiians, they knew they were onto something. The state agency that manages the trust didn’t know about the deals. The eligible Hawaiians who look to the trust as their only viable path to homeownership also didn’t know about them. Congress for years had been approving the sale of excess federal land in Hawaii to private parties, and the approvals meant the land trust would not get first crack at the properties, as a 1995 federal law intended. Even some current and former members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation who voted for the deals – typically outlined in short passages tucked into massive must-pass defense spending bills – said they were unaware that the deals bypassed the trust. But Hawaii’s two U.S. senators, who both voted years earlier for legislation allowing the practice, vowed to stop any future circumventions. They made their pledges in interviews – even before the findings of the Star-Advertiser/ProPublica investigation had been published. The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, the agency that manages the land trust, and leaders in the Native Hawaiian community also said the news organizations’ findings would prompt them to be alert to any future attempts to circumvent the 1995 law giving the trust first crack at excess federal land. If they are true to their word, the impact from our investigation will be long lasting.
RUNNER-UP: Anita Hofschneider, "Police Killing Of Micronesian Teen In Hawaii Prompts Grief And Questions," Honolulu Civil Beat
Rob Perez
(Investigative Reporter, Honolulu Star-Advertiser)
ROB PEREZ is an investigative reporter for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and a distinguished local-reporting fellow for ProPublica. He has been a journalist for more than 40 years, working at newspapers in Hawaii, California, Florida and Guam, where he’s from.
Rob Perez accepts the 2022 Excellence in Pacific Islander Reporting Award.
Excellence in Business/Consumer/Tech Reporting - Works Produced in 2021
Brian X. Chen, “The Cost of Being an Interchangeable Asian,” The New York Times
ABOUT THE PROJECT: Brian X. Chen’s work did what journalism at its best often strives to do: It made people feel seen. In this case, it made people who had often felt unseen, or misidentified, not just feel seen but also understand the insidiousness of that misidentification, and the effect it might have on their work. Brian’s deeply reported essay on the experience of life as an “interchangeable Asian” included nearly two-dozen conversations with Asian American professionals, as well as scholars of history and sociology. The project grew out of two pandemic trends: The troubling rise of hate crimes against people of Asian descent and a renewed focus in many corporate workplaces on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. That work is important. But, as Brian wrote: “As a first step, what many Asian American professionals need is simple. They want their colleagues to bother to learn their names.”
Brian’s background is as a tech reporter, and the project focused on how this phenomenon could be shaping tech work forces. “Even in Silicon Valley, where people of Asian descent make up roughly 50 percent of the tech work force, a rare few rise to the executive level; most peak at middle management,” Brian wrote, going on to note the diminishment of professional opportunity that can go along with being viewed as interchangeable in the workplace.
RUNNER-UP: Molly Solomon, Grandma Challenges Real Estate Giant in Early Test of New California Law, KQED
Brian X. Chen
(Columnist/Reporter, The New York Times)
BRIAN X. CHEN, an award-winning columnist and reporter, has written about consumer technology since 2011 for The New York Times, where he has also regularly contributed feature stories on the Asian American community for the Sunday Business and Arts sections. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Excellence in Commentary/Op-Ed/Perspective - Works Produced in 2021
Harry Mok, “Opinion: I was the Asian kid in a California farm town. Here’s what it taught me about belonging,” The San Francisco Chronicle
ABOUT THE PROJECT: Like many, I was enraged and disheartened by the anti-Asian hate and violence that surged during pandemic. I wanted to tell a story and help make sense of what was happening. This was especially true because my employer, the San Francisco Chronicle, had been admittedly slow to cover the spike in anti-Asian hate in a comprehensive manner until well after it was clear it was an important story for its readership — the Bay Area and its large Asian American population. I couldn’t do much about how the Chronicle covered the story, but I could add my voice. I could convey the immigrant experience of my family and its context to the current spate of anti-Asian hate. I could express the frustrations and the anger many Asian Americans and others felt. I help humanize the story for a broader audience and augment what at that point was the Chronicle’s paltry reporting on the issue, and I believe I did.
RUNNER-UP: Joseph Hernandez, “Self Love is an Egg Sandwich with Hot Sauce,” The Philadelphia Inquirer
Harry Mok
(Assistant Opinion Editor, The San Francisco Chronicle)
HARRY MOK is the assistant opinion editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. Before taking this position in 2021, he was a copy editor at the Chronicle and has held editing and online producer positions at the Bay Area News Group, Newsday and the San Francisco Examiner, and he was the editor in chief of Hyphen magazine. Harry is also a proud graduate of AAJA’s Executive Leadership Program. The opinion piece AAJA is honoring was workshopped in the Poynter Institute’s Power of Diverse Voices: Writing Workshop for Journalists of Color.
