AP, KFF Health and NPR’s Thompson win Barlett & Steele Awards

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 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.