SABEW names Best in Business winners

The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing announced Thursday the 162 recipients for its 27th annual Best in Business Awards, honoring excellence in business journalism.

The Best in Business Awards, covering business, finance and economic work published, broadcast and/or posted in 2021, attracted a record 1,277 entries from 194 news organizations across all platforms ranging from international, national and regional news outlets to specialized business publications.

“The Best in Business contest, with a 20% increase of entries, once again showed us what great journalism has been produced over the past year,” said Joanna Ossinger, co-chair of the Best in Business Awards and editor at Bloomberg News, in a statement. “This was an extremely competitive and impressive field.”

Among some of the winning business stories of 2021 that had an impact came from team coverage, such as The Wall Street Journal’s investigative work into Facebook on how the social media giant was “injuring its 3-billion-plus users.” The Financial Times’ team cover piece won in the banking/finance category exploring the “deep dive into why entrepreneurs from communities of color have a tougher time getting credit and why it’s more expensive.”

Individual journalists receiving recognition for exceptional coverage in SABEW’s newest award category Best Range of Work include Sam Dean of the Los Angeles Times, Alex Heath of The Verge and Nathan Rubbelke of the St. Louis Business Journal. Another strong example of individual work comes from Lauren Smiley’s rollicking piece for Wired, with the great headline: “He thought he could outfox the gig economy. He was wrong.”

Highlights include:

• The top three winners capturing the most overall awards include The Wall Street Journal (13 total; six winners plus seven honorable mentions), Bloomberg (12 total; nine winners plus three honorable mentions) and The New York Times (11 total; five winners and six honorable mentions).
• First-time entry award winners taking home awards included new SABEW members Nikkei Asia (five total; three winners plus honorable mentions) and Chicago Booth Review (two winners).
• General Excellence award winners demonstrating depth and breadth of quality submitting at least one element from three of five areas of coverage include The Counter (Industry/Topic Specific category), The Wall Street Journal (large category), Nikkei Asia (medium category), and Crain’s Detroit Business (small category).
• In the small organization-size category, these news organizations won multiple awards: The Counter (six total; four winners plus two honorable mentions) and the Portland Business Journal (five total; two winners plus three honorable mentions). Chicago Booth Review, St. Louis Business Journal and Quartz won two awards.
• Carolina News & Reporter, University of South Carolina’s student-run newsroom, and the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada-Reno’s The Hitchcock Project won top student journalism honors. University of South Carolina’s student Emma Dooling was recognized for her work with Nashville Business Journal.

“With 31 contest categories, the judges had an abundance of creative, innovative and thought-provoking content to consider,” said Scott Wenger, co-chair of the Best in Business Awards and chief content officer at VolpeMiller. “Winning stories, team coverage to individual features, either called out the most critical issues we face today begging for a solution to actually forcing change. Submissions for the student journalism categories clearly portrayed the obvious growing talent and ambition of the next generation of journalists.”

View the complete list of 2021 BIB honorees.

Honorees will be celebrated during a reception at SABEW’s annual conference, May 12-13, at the Dotdash Meredith office in New York’s financial district.

Tickets to attend #SABEW22 are available and Best in Business honorees will receive a special rate of $199.

The Best in Business celebration will be on Thursday, May 12.