The National Press Foundation’s annual journalism awards dinner honored Robin Roberts of Good Morning America and other top journalists on Feb. 23, 2023. Please join us for NPF’s 41st Annual Awards Dinner Feb. 15, 2024.
The dinner brought together more than 600 journalists, communications professionals, philanthropists and other influencers to celebrate the best in journalism and the First Amendment. This event gives sponsors an opportunity to network with an influential audience and a chance to meet the best journalists in the business. All proceeds go to support journalism training programs, including the Paul Miller Fellowship and the Widening the Pipeline fellowship.
Accepting their awards at the dinner:
In a career that has taken her from college basketball star, local sports reporter and top ESPN anchor and correspondent to co-anchor of ABC News’ Good Morning America, Roberts has won numerous journalism awards, including multiple Emmy Awards, sports awards and public service honors.
NPR host Scott Simon, winner of the W.M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism Award.
NPF’s judges noted Simon’s lifetime achievements in journalism. The Chicago native has reported from all 50 states and five continents, covered 10 wars and published both nonfiction books and novels. He has won Emmy and Peabody awards and is a special contributor to CBS Sunday Morning.
Simon has also mastered the transition to digital media, writing the “Simon Says” blog and acquiring more than a million Twitter followers.
Manny García, who led the Austin American-Statesman’s audacious and inclusive coverage of the Uvalde school shooting, winner of the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year Award.
García had been executive editor only 14 months when the shooting began at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where most residents are Latino. Under his leadership, the English-language Statesman published the Texas House committee report on the Uvalde school shooting in Spanish as a public service.
The translation was done by a collaboration of Spanish-speaking journalists from the USA Today Network, plus around the country and in Mexico. The Statesman printed 10,000 copies and staffers, including García, distributed them free in Uvalde, at churches, restaurants, the library and other locations.
Boston Globe cartoonist Ward Sutton, winner of the Clifford K. and James T. Berryman Award for Editorial Cartoons.
Sutton’s satire skewered U.S. politicians for inaction on school shootings, explored dark scenarios about the end of American democracy, and portrayed Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping as new lovers in an ardent authoritarian embrace. “Ward Sutton’s cartoons all illustrate the power of direct impact, but the more you look at them, the more you see their nuance and complexity,” NPF’s judges said. They called Sutton’s portfolio “just powerful.”
Mosheh Oinounou of the Mo News Newsletter and the Mo News Podcast, who has been selected for the NPF Chairman’s Citation.
At the height of the pandemic in 2020, the former CBS Evening News executive producer launched Mo News on Instagram with the mission of breaking down the news in a “conversational, understandable, and non-partisan way” to audiences’ phones. In 2022, he launched the Mo News Newsletter and the Mo News Podcast, where he provides daily analysis on current topics.
USA Today journalists Aleszu Bajak and Ramon Padilla, winners of the Innovative Storytelling Award.
They used computational tools from linguistics and political science to show readers not just how and how far Congress has polarized, but also how Democrats and Republicans increasingly do not even use the same language or talk about the same topics on Twitter. The winning story titled “‘Hope’ is out, ‘fight’ is in: Does tweeting divide Congress, or simply echo its division?” left that seminal question unanswered. But the animated analysis unspooled to show how lawmakers are “segregating into distinct rhetorical clusters linked by party, effectively speaking different languages” and how the parties are increasingly talking about different issues.
Nikkei Asia reporters Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li, winners of the Hinrich Foundation Award for Distinguished Reporting on Trade.
Nikkei Asia reporters Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li had been covering Apple’s iPhone production woes in China in 2021. Their deep expertise on how the phones are manufactured and where their components are sourced was put to the test when Moscow attacked Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022. Less than 36 hours later, Cheng and Li had filed a scoop from Japan revealing that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would jeopardize the global supply of industrial gases that are essential to the production of semiconductors. Nikkei Asia reporter Kim Jaewon also contributed to the report from South Korea.
Orion Donovan Smith of the Spokane, Wash. Spokesman-Review, winner of the “Feddie” award.
NPF judges hailed the work for tackling a tough but not eye-popping topic – a panoply of egregious failures in a new record-keeping system the VA launched in 2020 – and keeping at the investigative reporting to document the harm done to veterans. One of Smith’s stories reported that patient advocates worried that “veterans could wind up dead” as a result of the system put in place at the Spokane VA Hospital.” Critics said the flawed system, which cost taxpayers billions, “effectively beta-tested on live patients in the Inland Northwest.”
Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress winner Christa Case Bryant of the Christian Science Monitor.
The winning work included Bryant’s story on the efforts to diversity Capitol Hill staff. It featured insightful reporting about why both racial and socioeconomic diversity matter as well as intimate portrayals of the unglamorous daily lives of the staff whose trust she gained. Judges also cited a deeply reported piece on how 10 staffers who worked on the Watergate hearings viewed the Jan. 6 hearings.
Support ongoing journalism education
To purchase a table, place an ad in the program, or explore other opportunities to participate in next year’s event, please contact Jason Zaragoza at jason@nationalpress.org.
Exclusive cocktail reception sponsorship opportunities are available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
This event underwrites NPF’s mission of training and educating journalists to succeed in an increasingly challenging news environment. Your support for a healthy information ecosystem helps sustain American democracy.
We thank our 2023 dinner sponsors:
