Congratulations to our 2025 honorees! The Best in Business Awards attracted 988 entries from 150 news organizations, ranging from international, national and regional news outlets to specialized business publications.
Banking/Finance
Large division
Winner – International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in collaboration with The New York Times and Toronto Star; The Coin Laundry
Spencer Woodman, Scilla Alecci, Agustin Armendariz, Miguel Fiandor Gutiérrez, Sam Ellefson
Honorable Mention – The Wall Street Journal; The AI Investment Frenzy
Eliot Brown, Robbie Whelan, Matt Wirz, Peter Rudegeair
Medium division
Winner – Barron’s; Inside JPMorgan Chase
Rebecca Ungarino
Small division
Winner – Dallas Business Journal; Will Y’all Street be for all?
Holden Wilen, Leonardo Rosas
Best Range of Work
Large division
Winner – The Washington Post; The federal government whisperer
Hannah Natanson
Honorable Mention – The New York Times; David Yaffe-Bellany
David Yaffe-Bellany
Medium division
Winner – The Seattle Times; Jessica Fu’s wide-ranging coverage of affordability and the cost of living crisis in Seattle
Jessica Fu
Small division
Winner – Crain’s Detroit Business; Dustin Walsh
Dustin Walsh
Honorable Mention – Crain’s New York Business; Aaron Elstein covers New York in Crain’s New York Business
Aaron Elstein
Breaking News
Large division
Winner – Bloomberg News; Manhattan Shooting
Honorable Mention – Los Angeles Times; Paramount was poised to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. What went wrong?
Meg James, Stacy Perman, Wendy Lee
Medium and small divisions
Winner – Crain’s New York Business; Paramount Group CEO’s sneaky pay
Aaron Elstein
Honorable Mention – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; U.S. Steel/Nippon deal blocked by Biden
Staff
Commentary/Opinion
Large division
Winner – Bloomberg News; Xi’s World
Daniel Ten Kate, Edward Johnson, Kira Bindrim
Honorable Mention – Bloomberg News; The Race to Dominate AI
Parmy Olson, Dave Lee, Catherine Thorbecke, Taylor Tyson
Medium division
Winner – The Guardian; The Ills of American Capitalism: Who the US economy leaves behind
Eduardo Porter
Small division
Winner – Capital & Main; The Arc
Erin Aubry Kaplan
Data Journalism
Large division
Winner – The Washington Post; Measuring the TikTok User Experience through Crowdsourced Data
Staff
Honorable Mention – Business Insider; The true cost of data centers
Business Insider Staff
Medium division
Winner – OCCRP in collaboration with Swedish Television (SVT) and 30 media partners; Inside a Merciless Scam Empire
Staff
Small division
Winner – World Trademark Review; Adult film company flooding US courts with copyright suits is now going after Meta
Nisha Shetty
Honorable Mention – Dallas Business Journal; Will Y’all Street be for all?
Holden Wilen, Leonardo Rosas
Economics
Large division
Winner – The Boston Globe; Squeezed: Why the middle class is disappearing in Massachusetts
Staff
Honorable Mention – Bloomberg News; The Deportation Economy
Staff
Medium division
Winner – Nikkei Asia; Chinese companies find ways around U.S. trade barriers
Stella Yifan Xie, Pak Yiu, Cheng Ting-Fang, Lauly Li, Wataru Suzuki
Honorable Mention – Houston Chronicle; The New Economics of Homebuilding: labor shortages, tariffs and uncertainty
Marissa Luck
Small division
Winner – Inside Climate News; Upcharge
Dan Gearino, Charles Paullin, Lee Hedgepeth, Lanier Isom, Rambo Talabong
Energy/Sustainability/Climate
Large division
Winner – The New York Times; Exposed and Expendable
Hannah Dreier
Honorable Mention – Bloomberg News; Permian Toxic Water
Kevin Crowley, David Wethe, Dave Merrill, Christine Buurma, Alex Gittleson
Honorable Mention – Los Angeles Times; While LA Burned, SoCal Edison Profited
Melody Petersen
Medium division
Winner – San Francisco Chronicle; Burned: A San Francisco Chronicle series on how the insurance industry has failed wildfire victims
Megan Fan Munce, Susie Neilson, Sara DiNatale
Honorable Mention – Miami Herald; Floods of Trouble
Alex Harris, Susan Merriam
Honorable Mention – The Detroit News; Unplugged: EV Battery boom fizzles – Detroit News
Luke Ramseth
Small division
Winner – Grist; The Disaster Economy
Staff
Honorable Mention – Public Health Watch; Fumed
Staff
Explanatory
Large division
Winner – Financial Times; How Saudi Arabia’s Neom Dream Unraveled
Alison Killing
Honorable Mention – Bloomberg Green; Space Pollution
Eric Roston, Sana Pashankar, Hayley Warren, Jin Wu
Honorable Mention – The New York Times; The Data Center Surge
Staff
Medium division
Winner – Miami Herald; Floods of Trouble
Alex Harris, Susan Merriam
Honorable Mention – Chicago Tribune in collaboration with Illinois Answers Project; Inside Cook County’s Property Tax Debacle
A.D. Quig, Alex Nitkin
Honorable Mention – Houston Chronicle; What the rise and fall of Houston powerhouse Sunnova Energy means for the future of U.S. solar
Claire Hao
Small division
Winner – Suncoast Searchlight; Power and Profit
Josh Salman, Derek Gilliam
Honorable Mention – Inside Climate News; Fracking Forever Problem
Kiley Bense, Peter Aldhous
Honorable Mention – Coinage; Inside Trump’s Plan to Launch a Digital Dollar at World Liberty Financial
Zack Guzman, Marcos Wondracek
Feature
Large division
Winner – Bloomberg Businessweek; India’s Digital Dream, Hacked
Natalie Obiko Pearson, Suparna Sharma
Honorable Mention – The Washington Post; Emily and the new American dream
Drew Harwell
Honorable Mention – The New York Times; Inside the Murdochs’ Succession Drama
Jonathan Mahler, Jim Rutenberg
Medium division
Winner – Wired; The Worst 7 Years in Boeing’s History—and the Man Who Won’t Stop Fighting for Answers
Lauren Smiley
Honorable Mention – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; The Pulse of Pittsburgh: 24 Hours Downtown
Staff
Small division
Winner – Chicago Booth Review; The surreal economics of the contemporary-art market
Katia Savchuk
Honorable Mention – STAT; How the CRISPR Boom Went Bust
Jason Mast
Honorable Mention – The Information; Hock Tan
Jemima McEvoy, Qianer Liu, Wayne Ma
General Excellence
Large division
Winner – The New York Times
Staff
Honorable Mention – The Wall Street Journal
Staff
Medium division
Winner – CNBC
Staff
Small division
Winner – STAT; Sharp, original, and tough business coverage
Staff
Honorable Mention – St. Louis Business Journal
Staff
Government
Large division
Winner – Capital & Main in collaboration with Los Angeles Times; California’s Child Farmworkers: Exhausted, Underpaid and Toiling in Toxic Fields
Robert J. Lopez
Honorable Mention – The New York Times; Air Traffic Safety Failures
Sydney Ember, Emily Steel, Kate Kelly, Mark Walker, Niraj Chokshi
Honorable Mention – The Wall Street Journal; How the Trumps Turned an Election Victory Into a Cash Bonanza
Angus Berwick, Patricia Kowsmann, Rebecca Ballhaus, Dana Mattioli, Annie Linskey
Medium division
Winner –The Record/NorthJersey.com; Hidden at Home
Ashley Balcerzak, Jean Rimbach
Honorable Mention – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in collaboration with Medill Graduate School of Journalism; Deadly Dust
Michael Sallah, Jimmy Cloutier, Mike Wereschagin
Small division
Winner – Capital & Main; It’s Brown and Burns Your Eyes. In Small-Town Texas, Clean Water Is Elusive.
Elena Bruess
Health/Science
Large division
Winner – Bloomberg News; Profit or Pain
Kendall Taggart, David Kocieniewski, Simon Marks, Gavin Finch
Honorable Mention – The New York Times; Our Broken Transplant System
Staff
Honorable Mention – The Wall Street Journal; Overmedicated America
Shalini Ramachandran, Betsy McKay, John West, Tom McGinty, Audrey Valbuena
Medium division
Winner – KFF Health News; How the Trump administration fueled a measles comeback in America
Amy Maxmen, Lauren Sausser
Honorable Mention – The Current GA in collaboration with ProPublica; Broken Pathways: How the Nation’s Only Medicaid Work Requirement Experiment Fails Georgians
Margaret Coker
Small division
Winner – STAT; How the CRISPR boom went bust
Jason Mast
Honorable Mention – Sherwood Media; Franken-pills: the rise of unregulated GLP-1s and the companies that sell them
J. Edward Moreno
International Reporting
Large division
Winner – Business Insider; Gaza’s Economic Collapse
Reem Makhoul, Robert Leslie, Yasser Abu Wazna, Marco Secci, Erica Berenstein, Leo Dawson
Honorable Mention – Bloomberg News; The True Cost of China’s Falling Prices
Staff
Medium and small divisions
Winner – Nikkei Asia; Developing Asia’s Brain Drain
Phuntsho Wangdi, Rurika Imahashi, Nana Shibata
Honorable Mention – Investigate Midwest in collaboration with Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk; China is investing billions in Latin America, potentially sidelining US farmers for decades to come
Monica Cordero, Ben Felder
Investigative
Large division
Winner – Reuters; Meta’s Secrets to Success
Jeff Horwitz, Engen Tham
Honorable Mention – Bloomberg News; Zombie debt
Staff
Honorable Mention – Consumer Reports in collaboration with Food & Environment Reporting Network, Groundwork Collaborative, More Perfect Union and The Guardian; Investigating Pricing at the Nation’s Largest Grocers
Derek Kravitz
Medium division
Winner – KFF Health News; Broken Rehab
Jordan Rau, Irena Hwang
Honorable Mention – San Francisco Chronicle; Burned: A San Francisco Chronicle investigation into how the insurance industry has failed wildfire victims
Megan Fan Munce, Susie Neilson, Sara DiNatale
Small division
Winner – MindSite News; Deadly Denials: When Insurers Fail to Cover Treatment for Eating Disorders, People Suffer. Sometimes They Die.
Melanie Haiken, Rob Waters
Honorable Mention – Inside Climate News; Wired for Profit
Dennis Pillion, Lee Hedgepeth
Investing/Markets
Large division
Winner – Bloomberg News; How Tariffs Ripped Through the Metals Markets
Staff
Honorable Mention – The Wall Street Journal; The Trump Crypto Story: Pardon and Profit
Rebecca Ballhaus, Patricia Kowsmann, Angus Berwick, Josh Dawsey, Caitlin Ostroff
Medium division
Winner – Fortune Magazine; Investors are betting big on ‘prediction markets’ Kalshi and Polymarket—will the gamble pay off?
Jeff John Roberts
Honorable Mention – Barron’s; Clicking to Invest
Jacob Adelman
Small division
Winner – Capital & Main; Dirty Money: Big Oil, Big Insurance and the Housing Crisis
Marcus Baram
Honorable Mention – Crain’s Grand Rapids Business; Michigan tribes borrow from Warren Buffett’s playbook to grow outside of gaming
Rachel Watson
Media/Entertainment
Large division
Winner – Bloomberg News; Netflix Clinches Warner Bros. Deal
Michelle F. Davis, Lucas Shaw
Medium and small divisions
Winner – CNBC; Paramount’s Pursuit of WBD
Alex Sherman, Lillian Rizzo, David Faber, Julia Boorstin, Sara Salinas
Newsletter
Large division
Winner – The Globe and Mail; Business Brief
Chris Wilson-Smith
Honorable Mention – The Washington Post; The Tech Friend
Shira Ovide
Medium division
Winner – The News & Observer; Open Source: A newsletter on business, technology and labor in North Carolina
Brian Gordon
Small division
Winner – STAT; Unpacking the messy, mystifying business of health care
Bob Herman
Honorable Mention – The Information; AI Agenda
Stephanie Palazzolo
Personal Finance
Large division
Winner – USA TODAY; The heir’s property
Andrea Riquier
Honorable Mention – Law360; The Law Firm Loophole: How Debt Companies Snare North Carolina Consumers
Daniel Connolly, Daniel Siegal, Orlando Lorenzo, Jason Mallory
Medium division
Winner – The Guardian; The Price We Pay
Barry Yeoman, Jocelyn Zuckerman
Small division
Winner – MarketWatch; How Much Will Your Next Hospital Stay Cost? No One Seems to Know
Richard Eisenberg
Podcast/Audio
Large division
Winner – National Public Radio; Planet Money explains tariffs and their consequences
Staff
Honorable Mention – The New York Times; The Daily: Liberation Day Fallout
Michael Barbaro, Jessica Cheung, Olivia Natt, Anna Foley, Staff of The Daily
Medium and small divisions
Winner – The Outlaw Ocean Project in collaboration with CBC Podcasts; The Outlaw Ocean Podcast
Ian Urbina and Staff of The Outlaw Ocean Project
Honorable Mention – Public Health Watch; Fumed
Staff
Real Estate
Large division
Winner – Bloomberg News; LA Wildfire Real Estate Aftershocks
Staff
Honorable Mention – Bloomberg News; Deception in Paradise
Andrea Navarro, Tanaz Meghjani
Medium division
Winner – Houston Chronicle; Built to Flood: Who profits and who pays the price for building in Texas floodplains
Yilun Cheng, Caroline Ghisolfi, Matt Zdun
Honorable Mention – CNBC; How the AI data center boom is reshaping rural America
Jordan Novet, Paige Totorelli, Pippa Stevens, MacKenzie Sigalos
Honorable Mention – Nikkei Asia; Shibuya: The Tokyo redevelopment project that never ends
Andrew Sharp
Small division
Winner – Capital & Main; Locked Out: How Some of Los Angeles’ Biggest Landlords Leave Section 8 Tenants Behind
Robin Urevich
Honorable Mention – Suncoast Searchlight; Power and Profit
Josh Salman, Derek Gilliam
Honorable Mention – MLK50: Justice Through Journalism; Paying for Squalor
Michael Finch II
Retail
Large division
Winner – Consumer Reports in collaboration with Food & Environment Reporting Network, Groundwork Collaborative, More Perfect Union and The Guardian; Investigating Pricing at Nation’s Largest Grocers
Derek Kravitz
Honorable Mention – The Globe and Mail; The Globe and Mail retail coverage
Susan Krashinsky Robertson
Medium division
Winner – CNBC; Walmart’s Marketplace boom: How lax vetting came with identity theft and fakes
Gabrielle Fonrouge, Paige Totorelli, Scott Zamost, Sara Salinas, Jacob Pramuk
Honorable Mention – The Cincinnati Enquirer; A year of questions and controversy for Kroger supermarkets
Alexander Coolidge
Honorable Mention – Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Raise prices or lose profits? Pittsburgh-area restaurant owners are wrestling with what to do about rising costs
Hal B. Klein
Small division
Winner – The Information; Retail’s AI Revolution
Ann Gehan, Catherine Perloff
Small Business
Large division
Winner – The New York Times; The Tariff Toll on Small Business
Daisuke Wakabayashi, Lydia DePillis, Sarah Kerr, Isabelle Qian, Mark Boyer
Medium and small divisions
Winner – Mainebiz; Portland at a crossroads
Renee Cordes
Student Journalism
Stories for Professional News Organizations
Winner – The Real Deal; Rent-stabilized losses have hit NYC pension funds. Will the city finally care?
Quinn Waller
Stories for Student Media Outlets
Winner – Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University; Off the Rails
Staff
Technology
Large division
Winner – The Wall Street Journal; The Dangerous Consequences of Chatbot Delusions
Julie Jargon, Sam Kessler, Sam Schechner
Honorable Mention – Reuters; Meta’s Secrets of Success
Jeff Horwitz, Engen Tham
Honorable Mention – Financial Times; Mark Zuckerberg’s turbulent year
Hannah Murphy
Medium division
Winner — The Markup in collaboration with The 19th, The Guardian and The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting; Dating App Cover-Up: How Tinder, Hinge, and Their Corporate Owner Keep Rape Under Wraps
Emily Elena Dugdale, Hanisha Harjani, Natasha Uzcátegui-Liggett, Stephanie Wolf
Honorable Mention — ProPublica; Zero Trust: Inside Microsoft’s Cybersecurity Failures
Renee Dudley, Doris Burke
Small division
Winner – IEEE Spectrum; Ukraine Tech
Tereza Pultarova, Jean Kumagai
Honorable Mention – Sherwood Media; Making AI and its impact understandable to humans
Jon Keegan, Josh Adams
The Business of Sports
Large division
Winner – The Wall Street Journal; How the Black Market for High-School Athletes Tore a Family Apart
Harriet Ryan
Medium and small divisions
Winner – The Guardian; The Big Bet: Inside America’s online gambling boom
Anna Betts
Honorable Mention – Barron’s; Sports Betting’s Ticking Time Bomb
Nick Devor
Travel/Transportation
Large division
Winner – The Wall Street Journal; Toxic Fumes Are Leaking into Airplanes
Benjamin Katz, John West, Andrew Tangel, Peter Champelli
Honorable Mention – Bloomberg News; The Dark Side of Peru’s Rainbow Mountain
Marcelo Rochabrun, Leila Hussain
Medium and small divisions
Winner – Miami Herald in collaboration with National Public Radio; Killer Train
Staff
Honorable Mention – Fortune Magazine; Two firefighters suffered chemical burns in a Boring Co. tunnel. Then the Nevada governor’s office got involved, and the penalties disappeared
Leo Schwartz, Jessica Matthews
Video
Large division
Winner – Business Insider; Inside the Data Center Explosion
Robert Leslie, Marco Secci, Hannah Beckler, Dakin Campbell, Erica Berenstein
Honorable Mention – Financial Times; Trump, tariffs, and the battle for blue collar America
Joe Sinclair, Patti Waldmeir
Medium and small divisions
Winner – CNBC; RiskyRX
Melissa Lee, Scott Zamost, Paige Tortorelli, David Lettieri
