Emerging Journalist of the Year: Sophia Cai
Sophia Cai is a politics reporter at Axios, focusing on the Biden administration, Capitol Hill investigations and the 2024 presidential campaign. She previously covered the White House and Congress for Bloomberg, where she was part of the team reporting on Trump’s last-minute airlift to Walter Reed, the 2020 election and the aftermath of the insurrection. She has made guest appearances on MSNBC, CNN, CBS New & BBC World News to discuss her reporting. Her work has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, and WLRN, Miami’s NPR station. Sophia graduated with a degree in politics and minors in gender studies and journalism from Princeton University
ABOUT THE WINNER: Sophia Cai’s newsroom at Axios insisted that she put herself forward for this award, which honors general excellence or outstanding work by a student or early career member. With good reason: In addition to driving the news agenda on Capitol Hill, she is one of the youngest reporters covering the White House—regularly breaking news on administration policy and personnel changes.
“With a stroke of luck and the blessing of editors who took a chance on a wide-eyed 21-year-old, I’ve developed a knack for breaking news across key beats in Washington, relying on a network of sources across the White House and Congress that I developed over the two and half years I’ve been reporting in D.C.,” Sophia said. Among the stories she broke in 2022:
First to report on Republican interest in reforming the Electoral Count Act that governs the certification of presidential elections months after the January 6 insurrection — until then regarded as being only of interest to Democrats.
Scooped that US appeals court judge J Michael Luttig, who advised former vice president Mike Pence that his power at the certification was ceremonial, would testify at the House January 6 committee's hearings - a story followed by CNN, CBS and others.
Obtained data that showed that 50% of eligible borrowers in every congressional data applied for Biden’s student loan program.
Revealed that the Trump administration, like the Biden Administration, had sold some of the U.S. strategic oil reserves to China's largest oil producer.
Wrote a 4,000-word Businessweek story with a colleague following the journey of one teenager and his family into and out of ISIS extremism. That led to the nonprofit helping him and others deradicalize to receive tens of thousands of dollars in federal funding.
“Across multiple beats and storylines, I’ve tried to uncover stories that the targets in my crosshairs would prefer to be kept hidden to advance the public's understanding of our government. I’ve had the chance to discuss my reporting on CNN, MSNBC, CBS News and BBC World News.
“This year, too, I ran the NYC marathon for AAJA, collectively raising over $37K for AAJA and following through on a promise I made to myself as a student that if I found a full-time job in journalism, I’d want to be a part of the initiatives that bring people of color into newsroom—and retain them.”