Award-Winning Work and What It Demonstrates About Journalism

Welcome to Second Rough Draft, a newsletter about journalism in our time, how it (often its business) is evolving, and the challenges it faces.

If you ever find your faith in the importance of great journalism flagging, or wondering about our work’s ability to help you make sense of the world, I hope you have the opportunity to judge a contest. I recently had such a chance, helping to select the best explanatory reporting of 2025 for the second annual Goldsmith Prize for Explanatory Journalism, administered by the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School (where I also serve as a member of the advisory board). The winner of the award and three finalists were just announced. This week I want to walk you through why I found the experience so reassuring, and reflect on some of what I think the entries, including the best of them, demonstrate.

 

Drumroll, please

First, the news: This year’s Goldsmith Explanatory Prize goes to “Power Struggle,” a series of stories from Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica, and reporters Tony Schick and Monica Samayoa, about the frustrations of trying to bring green energy to the Pacific Northwest. Because of my ties to ProPublica, I recused myself from considering this entry and did not vote on or in any way discuss its merits.

The three finalists are:

• a series on “The New Energy Crisis”, focusing on the impact of data centers in exurban Virginia, reported principally by Peter Cary and published by two local newspapers under common control, the Fauquier Times and the Prince William Times, with the support of their owner the Piedmont Journalism Foundation (disclosure: an occasional consulting client of mine from 2021-23);
• a “documenting podcast” series called “Where the Schools Went,” an exploration of how schools changed in New Orleans as a result of Hurricane Katrina and in the two decades since. This work comes from The Branch, in partnership with The 74 and MeidasTouch, and is the work of a team including reporter and host Ravi Gupta; and
• the New York Times series “American Inertia,” a probing exploration of what is holding back infrastructure improvement across the country, and especially in its largest city. (Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be a series page for this work; here’s a link to the last story in the series, with links to the earlier work at the bottom of the page.)

When you have the time, I would urge you to read all this work. You’ll find yourself smarter for it, and it will, I am sure, buttress or restore of your faith in the capacity of journalism to make sense of our increasingly complicated and elusive world. You’ll also—and this is the intent of the Goldsmith Explanatory Prize—have a stronger, deeper sense of how government works, and sometimes doesn’t, in this country.

 

What I learned

Here is what else I think we can learn from this work, taken as a whole:

• Truly great journalism is still possible everywhere. The population of Warrenton, Virginia, the home of the Fauquier Times, is less than 11,000. With locally-based philanthropic support, that paper has published an 12-part series (and counting) on the most significant problem confronting the community. Of the four finalist entries, one came from small towns, one from a single large city, one from a regional player looking across two states (Oregon and Washington) and another from a national publication able to range across the country for powerful stories with a common theme.
• The best journalism increasingly comes in a widening range of forms and formats: lessons from large data sets, the emotive force of brilliant podcasting, strong photography and video and sophisticated graphics— even as compelling narrative writing and editing retain their force.
• For all but the largest publishers, and sometimes even for them, the power of partnerships continues to be demonstrated at the highest level of our craft. Reporter Schick has worked jointly for OPB and ProPublica for seven years now; previous work during that collaboration won an Oakes Award for environmental journalism and a bronze award in the Barlett & Steele annual investigative competition. The Branch, seeking an audience for a deep dive podcast on education policy, enjoyed support from both a leader in education journalism as well as another in podcasting more broadly.
• It is still quite feasible to tell complicated stories in ways that make a difference. While explanatory journalism may be less focused on changing the world than investigative work, it can still do so, as two executive orders in Oregon in response to the prize-winning series demonstrate. Even more important, the messiness of real life remains the stuff of outstanding journalism. The thrust of “Power Struggle” comes in explaining how limits placed on energy production by liberal activists a half century ago are now having the effect of holding back both green energy and economic development.
• “Where the Schools Went” reminds us that good news can also be illuminating. Those of us for whom Katrina remains a searing memory would hardly have imagined that 20 years later New Orleans schools would be producing both better educational results and greater equity. How that happened is eye-opening. Even the New York Times infrastructure series ends with a persuasively encouraging essay from critic Michael Kimmelman.

Most editions of this newsletter focus on problems, on ways we are falling short, on places where we need to do better and on issues on which thinking remains muddled. That is the nature of this work, and I do not regret it, nor seek to foreswear it. It has its place. But I am glad this week to have taken a break from that, and to linger for a few minutes on what our colleagues are getting right. I hope you find that as affirming as I do.

Leave a comment