In this category, the judges selected two winners and two honorable mentions.
Winner – InsideClimate News: Harvesting peril
- Contributors – Georgina Gustin, Neela Banerjee, John H. Cushman Jr., Paul Horn, Anna Belle Peevey
- Judges’ Comments – This stunning series takes you inside agriculture’s role as perpetrator and victim of climate change. Exceptionally well done, including a look inside the power of Farm Bureau. The package explains how farms can be part of the solution.
Winner – Project On Government Oversight: Drilling Down
- Contributors – David Hilzenrath, Nicholas Pacifico
- Judges’ Comments – This series picks up where the headlines leave off, looking into Big Oil and its risks and relationships in Washington. One story broke news on a subject of vital public interest as the Trump administration prepares to open vast new offshore tracts to drilling. It showed how a little-noticed change of the bidding system put oil companies in charge — a collusive arrangement that’s allowed them to reap billions of dollars at public expense. Additionally, the project found that the administration is adopting industry-written rules that will remove many of the layers of safety added after the BP oil disaster.
Honorable Mention – The Desert Sun: Poisoned cities, deadly border
- Contributor – Ian James, Zoë Meyers
- Judges’ Comments – A multimedia series that explains why air pollution in the border city of Mexicali is poisoning and killing people on both sides of the border. Exceptionally well written, with poignant stories of the toll of ignoring this air pollution crisis.
Honorable Mention – McClatchy DC Bureau: Ancestry DNA: Privacy for sale
- Contributor – Stuart Leavenworth
- Judges’ Comments – You pay to have your DNA tested so you can unlock your heritage. But for Ancestry, it means big dollars as they sell information gleaned from their control of a database with more than 9 million samples. This story explains what happens when you consent to have your genes examined.
