SABEW names Best in Business award winners

The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing announced Thursday the 153 recipients of its 28th annual Best in Business Awards, honoring excellence in business journalism from 2022.

The Best in Business Awards attracted 1,182 entries from 193 news organizations, ranging from international, national and regional news outlets to specialized business publications. Thank you to all the judges.

“The Best in Business Awards competition is going from strength to strength, attracting a bigger and more diverse set of entries again this year,” said Joanna Ossinger, co-chair of the Best in Business Awards and markets editor at Bloomberg News. “It’s wonderful to see so much informative and impactful work from the business journalism community. SABEW is pleased to honor some of the very best of those efforts.”

The top three categories that received the most submissions this year were Feature (102 entries), Explanatory (95) and Investigative (84). Among the winners was Lauren Smiley of Wired in the Feature medium-size category with “’I’m the Operator’: The Aftermath of a Self-Driving Tragedy.” The collaboration between The Center for Public Integrity and Indian Country Today (ICT) for “Unequal Burden” won in the Explanatory small-size category for its breadth of reporting, use of data and interactive graphics on how decades of tax cuts for the rich fuel income and wealth inequality. Engineering magazine IEEE Spectrum won in the Investigative small size category with “What Happens When a Bionic Body Part Becomes Obsolete?”

Individual journalists were recognized for their exceptional coverage in SABEW’s Best Range of Work award, where they submitted work across the broad spectrum of content platforms and categories. Winners included Ben Casselman from The New York Times and Aaron Elstein from Crain’s New York Business.

Highlights of the #SABEWBIB include:

• The top four winners capturing the most overall awards include The New York Times (14 total; eight winners and six honorable mentions), Bloomberg (13 total; five winners and eight honorable mentions), The Wall Street Journal (9 total; five winners and four honorable mentions) and ProPublica (eight total; four winners and four honorable mentions).
• General Excellence award winners include FedScoop (Industry/Topic Specific category), Bloomberg (large category), Nikkei Asia (medium category) and Crain’s New York Business (small category).
• Small-sized newsrooms that won in multiple categories include The Markup, with four wins. The following news organizations all had two wins Honolulu Civil Beat, IEEE, Spectrum, Crain’s New York Business and the Triangle Business Journal.
• Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication won top student journalism honors. Neetish Basnet of Cronkite News, the news division of Arizona PBS at ASU, won the Student Journalism award for Stories for Student Media Outlets for “Covering the Business Beat from Washington.” ASU’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism won the student journalism award in Projects and Collaborations with their multimedia investigative series “Gaslit.”
• Elizabeth Egan, a University of North Carolina student at Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Media and Mass Communication, won the Student Journalism–Stories for Professional Media Outlets category for her work with Triangle Business Journal (Raleigh-Durham N.C.).

“With 30 categories, the bold initiative and memorable writing in this year’s winning entries stand out, but so does the breadth of organizations that entered,” said Scott Wenger, co-chair of the Best in Business Awards and chief content officer at VolpeMiller. “It’s heartening that so many new outlets have emerged capable of shining a light in long-ignored corners, showcasing the vitality and value of the best of business journalism.”

View the complete list of 2022 BIB honorees.

Honorees will be celebrated during a reception at SABEW’s annual conference, #SABEW23, April 20-22, at the Poynter Institute campus in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Best in Business celebration will be on Friday, April 21. Register to attend #SABEW23. Honorees receive a special Best in Business rate.