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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.

Regional/Local Publications

2022

Silver

Dangerous Dwellings

By: Alan Judd and Willoughby Mariano

A year-long investigation examines the squalid living conditions in some of the city’s worst apartments. The reporters found that the housing shortage and government inaction enabled absentee landlords to squeeze the properties for higher profits while putting tenants’ safety in peril. Through a three-part series with character-driven stories and extensive data analysis, reporters show that much of the region’s affordable housing is nearly uninhabitable.

Publication: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

View Awards Video

Regional/Local Publications

2022

Bronze

Black Snow

By: Lulu Ramadan, Ash Ngu, Maya Miller, and Nadia Sussman

This story follows Thelma Freedman and her two grandsons who were hospitalized in 2019 for upper respiratory infections. They live in the Glades, an area in Florida that is home to growing half of the country’s cane sugar. Each year, growers will burn their fields as a harvesting technique that covers the town in ash. The investigation found that residents were exposed to pollutants in ways that monitoring systems had missed.

Publication: The Palm Beach Post and ProPublic

View Awards Video

Outstanding Young Journalist

2022

Gold

Faulty Heart Pumps

By: Neil Bedi

This investigation revealed how easily companies can slip through major systemic gaps in the government systems that are intended to protect the most vulnerable. Bedi rigourously worked to connect with people who were harmed by the devices to continue telling their stories even after the initial story was published. Bedi’s reporting prompted Congress to investigate the FDA’s regulation of the HeartWare device and pushed the manufacturer, Medtronic, to expand financial assistance to consumers.

Publication: ProPublica

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Best in Investigative Business

2021

Gold

The Secret IRS Files

By: Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel

This investigation exposed how the wealthiest people in America avoided paying their fair share of taxes at a time when wealth inequality has become a national crisis. Drawing on a massive collection of IRS data, the investigation revealed the shockingly low rates paid by billionaires and the machinations used to legally tell the IRS they make modest incomes while living lavish lifestyles.

Publication: ProPublica

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Best in Investigative Business

2021

Silver

Fruits of Labor

By: Margie Mason and Robin McDowell

The investigation exposed devastating abuses against millions of workers in Malaysia and Indonesia, many of them women and children, who produce 85% of the world’s supply of palm oil. This ubiquitous but largely unrecognized commodity appears in roughly half the products on Western supermarket shelves, from foodstuffs to cosmetics, including those from such global companies as Nestle, Unilever, L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble, and the makers of Girl Scout cookies.

Publication: The Associated Press

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Best in Investigative Business

2021

Bronze

The Cutting

By: Rob Davis, Tony Schick, & Lylla Younes

After scrutinizing three decades of records and thousands of emails they obtained, the reporters laid bare in agonizing detail how lawmakers put the profits of big business first. While tax policy changed to make the rich much richer, rural Oregonians suffered the consequences. The reporting team contacted more than 600 Oregonians through a statewide engagement campaign online, on the radio, and in community newspapers, finding deeply personal stories from Oregon’s timber country.

Publication: The Oregonian, Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica

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Best in Investigative Business

2020

Gold

Luanda Leaks

By: Team of journalists

Drawing on leaked records, the investigation centered on Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s wealthiest woman, who built a reputation on the false claim that she made her fortune through business acumen, grit and entrepreneurial spirit. The investigation was sparked by a leak of more than 715,000 documents and involved hundreds of interviews with sources in Angola.

Publication: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), FRONTLINE, Expresso, the New York Times and 33 other media partners

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Best in Investigative Business

2020

Silver

When the Wells Run Dry

By: Mark Olalde & Ryan Menezes

This series revealed that companies are idling wells instead of paying for cleanup. Well operators are required to post bonds to cover cleanup costs in case they aren’t around when the time comes. The analysis, however, used state data to show that these bonds are a tiny fraction of the actual expense — only $100 million of the roughly $6 billion the state would need to clean up all the unplugged wells in California. The investigation identified 35,000 wells sitting idle, half for more than a decade, which emit nauseating levels of gas at times all throughout the nation.

Publication: Center for Public Integrity & the Los Angeles Times

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Best in Investigative Business

2020

Bronze

Profiting from the Poor

By: Wendi C. Thomas

This investigation examined two institutions that profited from the poor – Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare and Southeastern Emergency Physicians. Thousands of poor residents have been sued for unpaid hospital bills and the investigation revealed the defendants’ misfortune. The series prompted changes within both institutions that would better support people struggling to pay medical bills, including the erasure of more than $11 million in unpaid bills for more than 5,300 defendants.

Publication: MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, working with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network

View Awards Video

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.”