The winners of the 19th Annual Barlett and Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism highlighted the variety of ways and the extent to which the public’s health is impacted – oftentimes negatively – by companies’ pursuit to maximize profits. Each award-winning investigation shed light on a systematic abuse that has left Americans disadvantaged in the face of corporate power, in some cases leading to the loss of homes, health, and even life.
In the Global and National category, the top honor goes to ProPublica for a gripping investigation into the million-dollar price tags applied to lifesaving medications by pharmaceutical companies driven by profit and enabled by a lack of federal oversight. Among regional and local publications, the San Francisco Chronicle took the top prize for uncovering how a faulty estimator tool left homeowners drastically underinsured, sometimes by hundreds of thousands of dollars, yet it is still used by many major insurers to set coverage limits. The 2025 Award for Outstanding Young Journalist goes to Alexa York at The Blade for stellar newspaper journalism that alerted her local community to radioactive groundwater contamination.
This is the fourth 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 across the United States. 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 Barlett and Steele Awards are named for the illustrious investigative business journalist team of Donald L. Barlett & James B. Steele.
“This extraordinary work is business investigative journalism at its best – probing behind the headlines to illuminate matters of great public interest,” said James B. Steele in a statement.
The Gold Award in the Global/National category was won by ProPublica reporters Robin Fields and David Armstrong for a stunning investigation into the exploitative pricing tactics used on life-saving medications. Their investigation shed light on how the greed of pharmaceutical companies – not manufacturing or research costs – drives up the price of life-saving medication astronomically to maximize company profits, with one such medication having a price tag of 26 times that of its production cost.
The Silver Award in the same category goes to reporters from STAT for their “Health Care’s Colossus” series that revealed how UnitedHealth has guaranteed impressive profit growth by purchasing clinics, contracting with the federal government through Medicare Advantage, and instructing doctors to over-diagnose patients. The Bronze Award goes to a reporting team at Reuters for “Fentanyl Express,” a multi-part series that revealed the intricacies of the fentanyl supply chain network that brings the deadly drug into the U.S, exposing the ease with which ingredients can be obtained from overseas, and how U.S. trade rules have made it more difficult to identify and stop these shipments.
The Gold Award in the Regional/Local category goes to the San Francisco Chronicle for uncovering the systemic use of a flawed estimator tool, 360Value, which utilizes faulty data, and how it was still used – despite awareness of the flaws – by several major insurers to set coverage limits. This left homeowners drastically underinsured, leaving many victims of the early 2025 California fires unable to rebuild their homes and communities.
The Silver Award in the regional and local category goes to KARE 11’s “Recovery Inc.” investigation into the corruption lurking in Minnesota addiction recovery treatment centers, where falsified treatment records were being used for fraudulent medical billing while vulnerable people were left without the care they needed. The Bronze Award goes to the podcast series “Fumed” by Public Health Watch, which follows two unlikely community members turned environmental activists as they fight the petrochemical industry’s abuses in their home city amidst a lack of federal oversight.
The Outstanding Young Journalist Award goes to Alexa York of The Blade for a local investigation that uncovered contaminated groundwater near an old Cold War weapons site, despite government assurances that it was contained. Independent testing revealed levels far higher than government limits, with one sample showing bismuth-214 in the water 1,731 times higher than standards allow. The story drew immediate attention and action, with federal, state and local investigations looking into the water quality in Luckey, Ohio.
“Alexa embodies the characteristics of all great journalists: empathy, skepticism and – perhaps most importantly – tenacity,” said Jeffrey Timmermans, director of the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, in a statement. “She is an outstanding role model for all young journalists and I am looking forward to following her career.”
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.
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