Inside Climate News has won four top prizes for distinguished reporting from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing in health, climate, economics and features.
SABEW, the business journalism organization that sponsors the annual Best in Business Awards, said ICN won more awards than any other small newsroom. All told, 181 news organizations of all sizes submitted 1,100 entries this year.
“We’re pleased and honored to receive this recognition from our peers and hope it’s a measure of our service to readers, for whom we work,” said Vernon Loeb, ICN’s executive editor.
ICN took top honors in four categories of the small-newsroom division.
“Captured,” reported by Liza Gross and Peter Aldhous, won the health and science category. The judges called it “an exceptional package detailing a flawed reliance on industry-funded scientific analyses at the EPA and the health impact of such chemicals being used in fields on farmworkers.”
“This project was inspired by pesticide-reform advocates who were fighting what they called separate and unequal rules proposed by California pesticide regulators,” said Gross, who has long reported on the abuse of science for private gain. “The rules basically said people who lived near fields treated with 1,3-D could be safely exposed to dramatically higher levels of this cancer-causing chemical than state health scientists said is safe. Most people who live near 1,3-D-treated fields are Latino, so that’s a clear environmental injustice issue.”
“This was a heavy lift, using state data on pesticide applications, plus detailed mapping of school grounds and nearby agricultural fields, to estimate potential exposures of children at school,” said Aldhous, a data reporter based in San Francisco. “In doing so, we provided a resource that local communities have been calling out for.”
“Cashing Out,” reported by Katie Surma and Nicholas Kusnetz, won the energy, sustainability and climate change category. The series investigated the wide-ranging environmental and human-rights consequences of a little-known international arbitration system, which allows companies doing business outside their own country to stymie efforts to regulate them and to win huge penalties at taxpayers’ expense.
“When I pitched the idea for the series I knew the system was widely criticized in legal circles,” said Surma, a lawyer who specialized in commercial litigation before joining ICN. “But it was startling to uncover just how powerful the rights of multinational corporations are, especially when compared to the rights of the communities and people their operations impact.”
“Without fail, when I told people about this system they were shocked at its existence and what it allowed,” said Kusnetz, who first learned about investor-state dispute settlement through his coverage of the oil and gas industry. “Few people have heard of it, yet its impacts reach into the lives of citizens around the world. We wanted to illuminate this system for readers and highlight what it means for people who live near projects that have prompted claims.”
“Gaslighting,” reported by Inside Climate News’ Lisa Sorg in partnership with The Assembly, won the feature category. The “eye-opening series paints a vivid portrait of a state grappling with an alarmingly rapid expansion of natural gas infrastructure,” judges said, even as disasters supercharged by climate change pummel that same state—North Carolina.
“I had been at ICN only a month when I embarked on this project,” said Sorg, a journalist for 30 years who came to ICN in 2024 from NC Newsline. “It started with a question: What is the emotional toll on people who live near a pipeline, power plant or liquified natural gas facility? Where do they find the strength to fight these projects? I’m grateful for those who opened their hearts to me and entrusted me with their stories.”
“Politically Charged,” reported by Marianne Lavelle and Dan Gearino, won the economics category. The series examined the increasingly politicized business of electric vehicles in the runup to the 2024 election. Judges said the journalists “expertly document the importance of EVs to the American economy and why their adoption is not (or should not be) a political issue.”
“Even though it is clear that the world is moving to EVs, it is equally clear that sentiment about the vehicles in the United States is split along the nation’s political fault lines,” said Lavelle, who is ICN’s Washington, D.C., bureau chief. “And sentiment is important because cars are not just a practical purchase. The car we choose conveys a lot about who we are. The places I visited that drove this home, so to speak, were South Carolina, which is benefiting from new EV and battery factories, but remains skeptical about the technology, and Mexico, where China is offering cool and affordable EVs that are leaving U.S. competitors in the dust.”
“The conversations I’m going to remember from this project are with hard-working people whose common sense about EVs stood in contrast to the way this product has become politicized,” said Gearino, an Ohio-based reporter who covers energy. “I’m thinking especially of the car salesman in Elk River, Minnesota, who is so good that I wanted to buy one right then, and the pastor-turned-battery-plant-worker near Youngstown, Ohio, who said he is everyone’s ‘work dad.’”
Gearino also received an honorable mention for his newsletter Inside Clean Energy. Judges wrote that it “punches above its weight, with insightful, well-researched analysis on important issues shaping the transition to a clean energy future.”
Founded in 2007, Inside Climate News is the oldest dedicated climate and environment newsroom in the nation. Nonprofit and non-partisan, ICN publishes essential reporting, investigation and analysis about the biggest crisis facing the planet. A watchdog of government, industry and advocates, ICN holds them accountable for their policies and actions by countering misinformation, exposing environmental injustice and scrutinizing solutions.
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