ProPublica Wins Two SEJ Awards
ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten and Joaquin Sapien each won first place in the Society of Environmental Journalists’ 10th annual awards—the world’s largest and most comprehensive awards for journalism on environmental topics. This is the third and second time, respectively, that the reporters have won SEJ awards.
Lustgarten won the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Large Market for his reporting on the BP oil spill with Ryan Knutson and PBS Frontline’s Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria. The series examined BP’s safety and cost-cutting record, environmental and health effects of the spill, the efforts at cleanup and how it all continues to affect workers and communities in the region. “Lustgarten’s ProPublica stories, and the accompanying 53-minute Frontline documentary produced by Smith and his team at Rain Media, put BP and the U.S. government under the microscope,” the judges wrote. “The image that emerged is both chilling and edifying. With the coming push for more oil and gas exploration in tougher to reach places, their powerful journalism could not be more prescient or important. In a category overflowing with extraordinary journalism, the work of Lustgarten and Smith stood out for its depth, clarity and fearlessness—the same qualities that distinguished the work of this category’s namesake, the late Kevin Carmody.”
Sapien, along with former Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporter Aaron Kessler and ProPublica’s news application developer Jeff Larson, won the Kevin Carmody Award for Outstanding In-depth Reporting, Small Market for their investigation into Chinese drywall. The series detailed how thousands of homeowners have experienced severe respiratory ailments and corroded electronics from Chinese-made drywall. Several companies that handled the drywall knew there were problems, but didn’t warn consumers or regulators for two years—leading to one of the biggest defective product investigations in U.S. history.
Read their award-winning entries here. And congratulations to everyone involved.
ProPublica in the News
- 100 great things about America
- How ProPublica changed investigative reporting
- In Praise of ProPublica
- Making a market: How ProPublica blends news that wins Pulitzers with news that wins followers
- Scott Klein: News apps don't just tell a story, they tell your story
- ProPublica's outreach a welcome step toward "open-source" journalism
Latest Press Releases
ProPublica Reports
Get Our Data and Reporting Tools
We frequently publish data, and reporting tools like tipsheets and guides.
Our Hottest Stories
- Bank of America Lied to Homeowners and Rewarded Foreclosures, Former Employees Say
- Time Out: Federal Complaint Alleges Rampant Abuse in Texas Truancy Program
- In Westchester, Progress on Housing and the Specter of Another Fight
- Worried about the Mass Surveillance? How to Practice Safer Communication
- When Interns Should be Paid: A #ProjectIntern Explainer
- Walmart Accepted Clothing from Banned Bangladesh Factories
- Without a Final Map, New York Rebuilds on Uncertain Ground
- Objection Overruled: Top Prosecutor Must Testify in Wrongful Conviction Case
- Rape and Other Sexual Violence Prevalent in Juvenile Justice System
- Remember When the Patriot Act Debate Was All About Library Records?
- Bank of America Lied to Homeowners and Rewarded Foreclosures, Former Employees Say
- The NSA Black Hole: 5 Basic Things We Still Don’t Know About the Agency's Snooping
- Walmart Accepted Clothing from Banned Bangladesh Factories
- The Best Stories on the Government’s Growing Surveillance
- Worried about the Mass Surveillance? How to Practice Safer Communication
- Betting Against the Future: How Industry Loses When Interns Go Unpaid
- Remember When the Patriot Act Debate Was All About Library Records?
- Unpaid Interns Win Major Ruling in 'Black Swan' Case — Now What?
- A Father’s Day Remembrance
- Housing Crisis: Widespread Discrimination; Little Taste for Enforcement






1 comments
Brian L. Fisher
Aug. 8, 2011, 6:26 p.m.
Kudos and congrats to ProPublica (and the journalists) for the SEJ awards! Keep up the good work ... the ‘Environment’ thanks you!