Announcing the winner of the 2021 Nina Mason Pulliam Award
for Outstanding Environmental Reporting
October 20, 2021 — The winner of the 2021 Nina Mason Pulliam Award for Outstanding Environmental Reporting is "Where Will Everyone Go? How Climate Refugees Might Move Across International Borders."
Congratulations to Abrahm Lustgarten, Al Shaw, Meridith Kohut, Lucas Waldron and Sergey Ponomarev for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine!
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| © Photo: ProPublica |
The Nina Mason Pulliam Award judges chose "Where Will Everyone Go? How Climate Refugees Might Move Across International Borders" as the "best of the best," after reviewing all the first-place winners of SEJ's 2021 Awards for Reporting on the Environment. The judges wrote:
"In a difficult year for journalism and journalists, environmental reporters produced a great deal of impactful work, creating a strong field of winners in the annual SEJ awards. The Nina Mason Pulliam Award recognizes the 'best of the best,' from among the first-place finishers of every category. This year's Pulliam honors 'Where Will Everyone Go? How Climate Refugees Might Move Across International Borders,' by Abrahm Lustgarten, Al Shaw, Meridith Kohut, Lucas Waldron and Sergey Ponomarev for ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine. This deeply reported and powerfully written series delivers a gut punch as it asks, and seeks to answer, some troubling questions about what will happen as a changing climate makes a growing number of places less amenable to human habitation. Reporter Abrahm Lustgarten combines impactful, up-close stories of present-day climate migrants with thoughtful analysis of where we may be heading. Superb photography, video, mapping and graphics make for a stunning multimedia package. The takeaways are sobering, and sure to deepen readers' understanding of the human consequences of failing to control emissions."
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| © Photo: Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting |
The judges also granted an Honorable Mention to Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting reporter Johnathan Hettinger and editors for "Dicamba on Trial." Judges had this to say about the project: "Dogged accountability journalism isn’t solely the province of large newsrooms. The nonprofit Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting deserves mention for digging deep to tell how many farms and natural areas had been poisoned by widespread spraying of the herbicide dicamba. Mining documents from lawsuits and state and federal agencies, reporter Johnathan Hettinger laid out the culpability of the pesticide’s manufacturers and of federal regulators."
>> Back to the Pulliam winners main page.
The Nina Mason Pulliam Award for the "best of the best" environmental reporting awards $10,000 to the winning entry. The prize also includes travel, registration and hotel expenses (up to $2500) for the winner, or representative of the winning team, to attend SEJ's annual conference.
The Award is sponsored by the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, in association with the Society of Environmental Journalists.
Established in the memory of Nina Mason Pulliam, who owned and operated an American national newspaper company with her husband, Eugene C. Pulliam, the Trust is proud to support environmental reporting and journalists who shine light in dark places and keep citizens informed about the pressing environmental issues of our time.
Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust Contact: Teri Walker, Director of Communications & External Relations
SEJ Contact: SEJ@sej.org
