Above all else, business journalism is about people: The people making business decisions and the people affected by them. The winners of the 18th Annual Barlett and Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism shine a spotlight on how the decisions of a powerful few impact the vulnerable many.
A two-year nationwide investigation by the Associated Press took the top honor among global and national publications for its series showing the direct links between prison labor and the American agriculture business. In the regional and local category, a collaboration among eight local TV news stations that uncovered just how many Americans are impacted each year by Social Security repayment demands took the top prize. The 2024 Award for Outstanding Young Journalist goes to Caitlin Thompson at NPR for her investigation into an obscure business model that targeted financially struggling homeowners.
This is the third year that the Barlett and Steele Awards have recognized publications across two distinct categories, Global/National and Regional/Local, in order to honor more of the incredible investigative work being done in the U.S. Each category features a Gold, Silver, and Bronze award. These awards come with cash prizes of $3,000, $2,000, and $1,000 respectively. The Outstanding Young Journalist Award features a cash prize of $3,000. The awards are named for the illustrious investigative business journalist team of Donald L. Barlett & James B. Steele, who worked together for more than four decades, in the process winning two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Magazine awards, and a long list of other journalism awards.
James B. Steele often notes that the best stories tell us something we don’t know, and this year’s honorees did just that.
“This year’s winners are powerful examples of what goes undetected in our society until enterprising reporters unmask the shocking details,” said Steele. “Some of the most important stories cannot be reduced to a sound bite, but require the sustained dedication, patience and commitment that we see here from the dedicated journalists who produced these extraordinary stories of great public interest.”
The Gold Award in the Global/National category was won by two reporters from the Associated Press for their investigative series, “Prison to Plate.” Their investigation linked some of the biggest American corporate giants to prison labor, often in direct violation of their own supply chain policies, resulting in an immediate response by several companies and a class-action lawsuit against cruel and unusual punishment for prisoners.
The Silver Award in the same category went to reporters from Business Insider for their series that revealed a shocking scheme by a giant prison healthcare company’s executives who siphoned off the company’s assets to avoid paying damages to injured inmates with the help of the Texas bankruptcy system. The Bronze Award went to a detailed and stunning narrative from ProPublica which focused on the experience of a 3M scientist to illustrate the decades-long coverup of a massive chemical threat to the health of millions of consumers.
The Gold Award in the Regional/Local category goes to an outstanding collaboration on a pervasive problem with Social Security payments that resulted in quick, significant changes in the system. The series “Overpayment Outrage” leveraged the expertise of the KFF Health Network and the community knowledge of regional Cox Media Group TV stations to produce an in-depth and compelling exposé of the Social Security Administration’s demands to be repaid for overpayment errors it made, sometimes decades earlier, and the hardship this placed on recipients.
The Silver Award in the Regional/Local category goes to a stunning series from the Chicago Tribune that exposed how the state health care system knowingly kept employees, including doctors, employed despite allegations of sexual abuse. The Bronze Award goes to a series “Hopes Foreclosed” by The Charlotte Observer/The News & Observer. The premise of the series – that people could lose their homes over small HOA debts – seems too outrageous to be true, but the reporter diligently showed that not only is it true, it is impacting real people every day.
The Outstanding Young Journalist Award goes to NPR reporter, Caitlin Thompson for her meticulous investigation into the leading sale-leaseback company EasyKnock and how it was costing some homeowners tens of thousands of dollars.
“A common theme among many of this year’s honorees is how vulnerable populations can be harmed by the decisions of big corporations, clearly showing the importance of business journalism’s watchdog role,” said Dr. Jeffrey Timmermans, director of the Reynolds Center. “Without the tireless efforts by this year’s honorees, much of that harm might never be known by the public.”
The Barlett & Steele Awards are administered by the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
About the winners
Gold – Global/National Category
In “Prison to Plate,” the Associated Press duo, Margie Mason and Robin McDowell, were able to link some of the biggest American food corporations to prison labor, often in direct violation of their supply chain policies. The reporters spent two years filing public records requests in all 50 states and drove across the country tailing trucks and prison work vans to unearth how money was flowing to corporate giants through the use of prison labor and sometimes at the expense of prisoners’ lives.
Focusing on the agriculture business allowed the reporters to demonstrate the clear connections between slavery and prison labor that have created entire business empires hidden in plain sight. Intense lobbying has made it easier for private companies to contract with prisons for workers who are not classified as employees and thus are largely denied the same basic rights and protections guaranteed to other American workers. With little oversight of the industry, the number of incarcerated workers who are hurt or killed on the job is impossible to tally and those who seek remedies for their injuries are confronted with legal hurdles.
“From the tiniest details to the boldest conclusions, the quality and depth of the AP’s reporting made this piece shine,” said the judges. They also noted that this investigation shows how “hundreds of popular U.S. food brands benefit from a hidden workforce of state penitentiary prisoners who work for pennies a day and are denied basic U.S. safety protections.”
Silver – Global/National Category
“Corizon’s Troubled Two-Step” by Business Insider reporters, Nicole Einbinder and Dakin Campbell highlights the notorious legal maneuver that would have allowed the company to evade accountability. Corizon Health Inc., one of the nation’s largest private prison healthcare providers in 2021, had over 475 active lawsuits that alleged medical negligence at prisons and jails across the country and dozens of other lawsuits claiming wage theft, wrongful termination, discrimination, and millions in unpaid invoices.
Through the use of court records, LLC registrations, short-seller reports, and other public records, the reporters were able to show meticulously how, with the help of the Texas bankruptcy system, executives and investors at Corizon were able to siphon off the company’s assets into a succession of corporate shell companies in order to avoid paying damages for these claims.
“Corizon’s cynical Texas two-step was no match for Einbinder and Campbell’s more deliberate dance through public records,” the judges said. “Their work exposed the ‘hidden players’ behind Corizon’s sale as well as many shocking examples of medical malpractice.”
Bronze – Global/National Category
Sharon Lerner from ProPublica spent years writing stories on the dangerous “forever chemicals” (PFOS) that Dow Jones Industrial Average component 3M Co. spent decades producing. In her most recent investigation, co-published with The New Yorker, Lerner spoke with multiple scientists who worked for decades in 3M’s environmental lab. Her powerful storytelling revealed just how long the corporate cover-up – impacting every person on the planet – has been going on.
A small group of 3M scientists and lawyers knew in the 1970s that PFOS had made their way into the blood of people all over the country, yet the company continued producing millions of pounds of the chemicals until 2000 and continues to use other varieties of forever chemicals in over 16,000 of its products today. Despite the company’s 2022 pledge to phase out the use of forever chemicals by 2025, there is no guarantee the company will fulfill that pledge. As noted by Lerner, to this day “the company and its scientists have not admitted wrongdoing or faced criminal liability for producing forever chemicals or for concealing their harms.”
The judges noted that this piece was “rich with feeling and delivered with compelling writing and crisp editing.”
Gold – Regional/Local Category
The collaboration of eight local TV news stations across seven states, with the assistance of KFF Health News, helped uncover the immense toll Social Security repayment demands has on some of the nation’s most vulnerable families – the very people the Social Security system was designed to protect. “Overpayment Outrage” displays exceptionally deep reporting to demonstrate the heavy-handed approach the Social Security Administration (SSA) takes in dealing with recovering overpayments to recipients – even when the overpayment was the mistake of the agency and had happened years prior.
After the investigation’s initial reporting, the House Social Security subcommittee held a hearing on the overpayments, citing the work of the reporters. When asked how many people receive overpayment notices in a year, the acting SSA commissioner understated the number by over half. This is despite the true number, over 2 million people, being listed on the exact document she was reading from during the hearing. The reporters discovered this after filing a very specific FOIA request to get a copy of that document.
As noted by the judges, “The fact that one well-handled FOIA request tipped the scales in exposing this issue is a testament to the importance of digging into documents to uncover misdeeds.”
Silver – Regional/Local Category
An investigation by Chicago Tribune reporters Lisa Schencker and Emily Hoerner unveiled the repeated mishandling of sexual abuse allegations within multiple well-known Illinois health systems. The reporters documented not only how health systems failed to protect patients from healthcare workers who were under investigation for sexual abuse, but how allegations of abuse were quietly settled away from the public eye and out of reach of regulatory boards.
As noted by the judges, this series was “a jarring exposé of abuse by physicians” and “the tenacity of reporters Lisa Schencker and Emily Hoerner is especially impressive because they could not gain access to Freedom of Information material with private health systems. Instead, they turned to public court hearings, medical board disciplinary records, police reports, and lawsuits to deliver a series that ignited action.” Following the publication of the “Medical Misconduct” series, Illinois lawmakers passed a bill addressing a legal loophole identified in the reporting and additional legislation is in the works to address other issues raised by the reporters.
Bronze – Regional/Local Category
“Hopes Foreclosed” is an investigation by Ames Alexander of The Charlotte Observer and The News and Observer that was determined to uncover how often HOAs in North Carolina are foreclosing on homeowners. With the assistance of database editor David Raynor, the investigation was able to reveal not only a troubling trend of HOA foreclosures in the region but how many of those foreclosures were due to debts of less than $2,000.
In a follow-up story, Alexander reported that these foreclosures opened the doors to financial predators who were taking advantage of “people who were in a horrible period of their lives.” Despite the investigation catching the attention of state lawmakers, Alexander reported that the lobbying on behalf of HOAs watered down the handful of basic proposed foreclosure restrictions intended to protect homeowners, making it clear that change in the state would be difficult.
What was “most impressive in the reporting was the level of detail and how the reporter explained such a complicated topic in easy to understand terms and nice transitions from one section to the next,” noted the judges “This is a series well told and infuriating to say the least.”
Outstanding Young Journalist
An NPR investigation by Caitlin Thompson revealed an obscure business model that often targets financially strapped homeowners who are unable to access traditional loan assistance. The company EasyKnock, the leader in sale-leasebacks, promises to help people “unlock” the equity in their property, but Thompson’s detailed reporting found that some homeowners were left with that promise unfulfilled.
Thompson’s reporting went above and beyond to ensure accuracy and was creative in her methods to obtain public records and ground her reporting in the company’s own internal records. Through court, property, and eviction records, in addition to cold-calling homeowners, Thompson was able to create a database of properties in the 10 most populous counties of Texas to calculate how much equity the homeowners were truly receiving during their business with EasyKnock and how that differed from the company’s promises.
“With home ownership becoming less and less accessible to everyday Americans, this story raises awareness of the dangers of unregulated, predatory lending practices in the sale-leaseback market,” the judges said. “Being a relatively new option for homeowners to consider when they are not eligible to refinance their homes, home sale-leaseback companies like EasyKnock don’t face the regulations that loan providers do. Without these regulations, homeowners lose the protections that they would have under a regular mortgage. The in-depth data journalism, strong narrative skills, and human-centric reporting bring this important and timely issue into clear focus.”
The Reynolds Center will spotlight the recipients of the top prizes at an event on Nov. 20 at 5 p.m. Arizona time in the First Amendment Forum at the Cronkite School in Downtown Phoenix. Tune in to The Reynolds Center event page for updates on the live event.
