Finalists Announced In 2019 Mirror Awards Competition

Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications today announced the finalists in the 2019 Mirror Awards competition honoring excellence in media industry reporting. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony June 13 in New York City. 

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

BEST SINGLE ARTICLE/STORY
“Erasing History” by Maria Bustillos (Columbia Journalism Review)
“Face the Racist Nation” by Jesse Brenneman and Lois Beckett (WNYC Radio and Guardian US)
“How Not to Cover America” by Michael Massing (The American Prospect)
“‘If Bobbie Talks, I’m Finished’: How Les Moonves Tried to Silence an Accuser” by James B. Stewart, Rachel Abrams and Ellen Gabler (The New York Times)


BEST PROFILE
“James O'Keefe Can’t Get No Respect” by Tim Alberta (Politico)
“Winning” by Patrick Radden Keefe (The New Yorker)
“The Skimm Brains” by Noreen Malone (New York Magazine)
“The Puzzle of Sarah Huckabee Sanders” by Jason Schwartz (Politico)
“Broads Save America” by Hannah Smothers (Cosmopolitan)


BEST COMMENTARY
“Missing the Story” by Jelani Cobb (Columbia Journalism Review)
“The great remove” by Sarah Jones (Columbia Journalism Review)
Series of pieces on the media in the age of Trump by Carlos Maza (Vox)
   “The Trump-Fox & Friends feedback loop, explained”
   “The Nunes memo fiasco shows how politicians troll the media”
   “The big problem with comparing Nixon to Trump” 
Series of columns by David Zurawik (The Baltimore Sun)
   “Mayor's call to ‘change the narrative’ is not the answer to Baltimore's perception problems”
   “Covering Trump as media figure challenges my core journalistic beliefs more and more”
   “Kavanaugh media takeaway: It takes more than TV hearings, hashtags to change the culture”


SPECIAL TOPIC CATEGORY: Best Story on Journalists or Journalism in Peril
“How Duterte Used Facebook To Fuel the Philippine Drug War” by Davey Alba (BuzzFeed News)
“The last independent newsroom in Turkey” by Shawn Carrié and Asmaa Omar (Columbia Journalism Review)
“Target: Journalist” by Johnny Dwyer and Ryan Gallagher (The Intercept)
“Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression” by Jamal Khashoggi (The Washington Post)


SPECIAL TOPIC CATEGORY: Best Story on Social Media in the Crosshairs
Series of pieces on problems with Facebook (BuzzFeed News)
   “Growth At Any Cost: Top Facebook Executive Defended Data Collection In 2016 Memo — And Warned That Facebook Could Get People Killed” by Ryan Mac, Charlie Warzel and Alex Kantrowitz
   “How WhatsApp Destroyed A Village” by Pranav Dixit and Ryan Mac
   “‘We Had To Stop Facebook’: When Anti-Muslim Violence Goes Viral” by Megha Rajagopalan and Aisha Nazim
Series of podcasts on internet outrage (The Daily) 
   “The Business of Internet Outrage” reported and hosted by Kevin Roose; produced by Andy Mills; edited by Larissa Anderson and Wendy Dorr
   “‘I Am Not an Internet Troll’” reported and hosted by Kevin Roose; produced by Andy Mills with Theo Balcomb, Rachel Quester and Alexandra Leigh Young; edited by Larissa Anderson, Wendy Dorr and Lisa Tobin
“The Facebook Armageddon” by Mathew Ingram (Columbia Journalism Review)
Series of pieces on junk news by Miles O'Brien (PBS NewsHour)
   “How Facebook’s news feed can be fooled into spreading misinformation”
   “Inside Facebook’s race to separate news from junk”
   “Why we love to like junk news that reaffirms our beliefs”


JOHN M. HIGGINS AWARD FOR BEST IN-DEPTH/ENTERPRISE REPORTING
“CJR Special Report: Photojournalism’s moment of reckoning” by Kristen Chick (Columbia Journalism Review)
Series of pieces on Leslie Moonves by Ronan Farrow (The New Yorker)
   “Trouble at the Top”
   “As Leslie Moonves Negotiates His Exit from CBS, Six Women Raise New Assault and Harassment Claims”
Series of pieces on ad fraud by Craig Silverman (BuzzFeed News)
   “Apps Installed On Millions Of Android Phones Tracked User Behavior To Execute A Multimillion-Dollar Ad Fraud Scheme”
   “Sen. Mark Warner Is Pressing The FTC To Tackle Digital Ad Fraud After A BuzzFeed News Investigation”
   “This Ad Fraud Scheme Stole Millions, But Almost No One Wants To Own Up To 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.

In addition to the juried awards, the Newhouse School will present the Fred Dressler Leadership Award and the i-3 award for impact, innovation and influence at the award ceremony, which will be held Thursday, June 13, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Cipriani 42nd Street, 110 E. 42nd St., New York City.