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Barlett & Steele Award Recipients

The winners of the Barlett & Steele Awards demonstrate time and time again the importance of investigative business journalism in exposing corporate wrongdoing and protecting the vulnerable. Winning entries are chosen not only for their journalistic merit but the impact that ripples out from the publication of the investigation. All of these investigations have led to significant change, with many seeing legislative reforms, federal investigations, or major changes in business practices that ultimately benefit the lives of everyday people.

An investigation into a business, especially private for-profit corporations, often comes with major hurdles, including tight-lipped employees, a lack of available data, legal barriers, and working with limited resources. These hurdles force journalists to get creative in their methods and the solutions they come up with show the sheer determination and willpower they possess to tell the stories we don’t know, but should.

All of these winning journalists and publications continue the long-standing legacy of Don Barlett and Jim Steele.

View the annual winners or filter through individual winners below.

Global/National Publications

2024

Gold

Prison to Plate

By: Margie Mason and Robin McDowell

This series was 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.

Publication: Associated Press

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Global/National Publications

2024

Silver

Corizon's Troubled Two-Step

By: Nicole Einbinder, Dakin Campbell, and Esther Kaplan

This series highlights the notorious legal maneuver that would have allowed a company to evade accountability. 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.

Publication: Business Insider

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Global/National Publications

2024

Bronze

3M and Forever Chemicals

By: Sharon Lerner

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.”

Publication: ProPublica

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Regional/Local Publications

2024

Gold

Overpayment Outrage

By: A collaboration of 30 reporters, photographers, and producers

This investigation 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. It displayed 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.

Publication: Cox Media Group and KFF Health News

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Regional/Local Publications

2024

Silver

Medical Misconduct

By: Lisa Schencker and Emily Hoerner

This series 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.

Publication: Chicago Tribune

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Regional/Local Publications

2024

Bronze

Hopes Foreclosed

By: Ames Alexander and 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 the reporter noted 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 catching the attention of lawmakers, lobbying on behalf of HOAs watered down the handful of basic proposed measures intended to protect homeowners.

Publication: The Charlotte Observer and The News and Observer

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Outstanding Young Journalist

2024

Gold

EasyKnock and Sale-Leasebacks

By: Caitlin Thompson

The investigation 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. 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.

Publication: NPR

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Global/National Publications

2023

Gold

Legal Weed, Broken Promises

By: Paige St. John, Brian van der Brug, Marisa Gerber, Adam Elmahrek, Robert Lopez, & Ruben Vives

This three-part series exposed bribery and corruption in the cannabis industry in California and showed the state government’s negligence in clamping down on marijuana companies and individuals operating illegal cannabis farms. The report highlights how California’s Proposition 64, signed in 2016, was expected to address the illegal cannabis market and address numerous violence and environmental degradation. The investigation exposed human rights abuses of cannabis workers, who were mostly immigrants, and documented over a dozen deaths of cannabis growers and workers poisoned by carbon monoxide.

Publication: Los Angeles Times

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Global/National Publications

2023

Silver

Uncovered

By: Ryan Gabrielson, David McSwane, David Armstrong, Maya Miller, & Patrick Rucker

The collaboration presented deep dives into common, under-reported, and bad-faith practices within the health insurance industry that gravely impacted the lives of the insured. In their meticulous research, the team of reporters identified three key ways health insurance actors can put patients at massive physical and financial risk – sometimes out of reach of any existing laws.

Publication: ProPublica and The Capitol Forum

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About Donald Barlett & James Steele

Donald Barlett and James Steele worked together for more than four decades, first at The Philadelphia Inquirer (1971-1997), where they won two Pulitzer Prizes and scores of other national journalism awards, then at Time magazine (1997-2006), where they earned two National Magazine Awards, becoming the first journalists in history to win both the Pulitzer and its magazine equivalent, and most recently were contributing editors at Vanity Fair (2006-2017).

The Washington Journalism Review said of Barlett and Steele: “They are almost certainly the best team in the history of investigative reporting.”