Awardees recognized in ceremony featuring Marty Baron, Dean Baquet, and more.
The Associated Press, Miami Herald, and Stanford University undergraduate Anna Yang took home the top prizes in the national/international, local, and student categories, respectively, at the ceremony for Peter F. Collier Awards for Ethics in Journalism, held on April 15 at the Paley Center for Media in New York.
The Collier Awards, a prize administered by New York University’s Ethics in Journalism Initiative and granted annually, commends journalism that meets the highest ethical standards in the face of pressure or incentives to do otherwise. The Atlantic, Mississippi Today, NBC News/Noticias Telemundo, and The Record, and student journalists from the University of Texas at Dallas (Tyler Crivella, Sheryln Dominguez, and Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez) and New York University (Dharma Niles and Krish Dev), were among those also recognized.
“Ethical journalism reflects our highest aspirations to provide the public with fair and accurate information and to hold our leaders to account, as the First Amendment calls on us to do,” Stephen J. Adler, founding director of the Ethics and Journalism Initiative, said of the awardees. “With honesty in fact-finding, transparency in methods, and humility in the face of uncertainty, we can rebuild trust.”
Marty Baron, acclaimed former executive editor of The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, delivered a keynote address, expressing concern over the fragmentation of the media landscape and calling upon journalists to renew their commitment to the core ethical principles of truth, independence, and humility. “Ours is a profession at risk of having no shared ethical compass at all. We will do ourselves no favors if that turns out to be the case. All of us will likely be tainted by the worst practices of any one of us,” said Baron in his address.
Nathan S. Collier, founder and chairman of The Collier Companies and benefactor of the Collier Awards, reflected on the legacy behind the prize. “It is a privilege to support the Peter F. Collier Awards, named in honor of my great-grand uncle, whose journey from Ireland in 1866 to founding Collier’s Weekly embodied a deep belief in integrity and public service. These awards recognize journalists who carry those same values forward, especially when doing so takes real conviction.
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Dean Baquet, former executive editor of The New York Times and current lead of the Times Local Investigations Fellowship; Lynette Clemetson, director of Wallace House Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan; Adam Ganucheau, executive editor of Deep South Today; Lynn Novick, acclaimed documentary filmmaker; Sheila Coronel, director of the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia Journalism School; Stephen Solomon and Meryl Gordon, professors of journalism at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute; and Tricia Crimmins, enterprise reporter at Morning Brew also served as presenters at the Paley Center event.
The awards concluded with a one-day symposium on April 16 at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where award winners discussed timely topics, including balancing privacy and disclosure when working with legally at-risk sources, publishing in the face of political opposition, and ethically covering and working with vulnerable populations, such as incarcerated individuals, undocumented immigrants, and adults with developmental disabilities.
The full awardees list is:
First Prize
Student Category: Anna Yang, The Stanford Daily: “A student reported her rapist to Stanford University. Two years later, the perpetrator was suspended.”
Local Category: Ana Ceballos, Claire Healy, Ben Wieder, Shirsho Dasgupta, Ana Claudia Chacin, the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times: “The Truth About Alligator Alcatraz.”
National/International Category: The Staff of The Associated Press, The Associated Press: “Freedom of Speech” (Gulf of Mexico)
Second Prize
Student Category: Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, Tyler Crivella, Sherlyn Dominguez, The Retrograde (University of Texas at Dallas): “‘My story was stolen from me and buried’: A survivor’s battle with UTD’s Title IX.”
Local Category: Brian Howey, Mukta Joshi, Jerry Mitchell, Steph Quinn, Nate Rosenfield, Mississippi Today/The New York Times: “Mississippi inmates used as enforcers.”
National/International Category: Jeffrey Goldberg, Shane Harris, Adrienne LaFrance, Griff Witte, Yoni Appelbaum, The Atlantic: “Signalgate”
Third Prize
Student Category: Krish Dev, Dharma Niles, Washington Square News (New York University): “NYU hit with 10 class action lawsuits following data breach.”
Local Category: Ashley Balcerzak, Jean Rimbach, The Record (New Jersey): “Hidden at Home: NJ group home residents face neglect, abuse and despair in flawed system.”
National/International Category: Mike Hixenbaugh, Jon Schuppe, Susan Carroll, Liz Kreutz, Anagilmara Vilchez, Tyler Kingkade, NBC News and Noticias Telemundo: “Dealing the Dead.”
The Peter F. Collier Award for Ethics in Journalism is sponsored by Nathan S. Collier, founder and chairman of the Collier Companies, in honor of his great-grand uncle, Peter F. Collier, who emigrated from Ireland in 1866, became a book publisher, and founded Collier’s Weekly in 1888.
The award’s panel of judges is composed of eminent journalists from across the news media landscape: Dean Baquet, executive editor of the local investigations fellowship at the New York Times; Sewell Chan, senior fellow at USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy; Gina Chua, editor-at-large of Semafor and executive director of the Tow-Knight Center at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY; Lynette Clemetson, director of the Wallace House Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan; Adam Ganucheau, executive editor of Deep South Today; Lynn Novick, a documentary filmmaker whose works include Baseball (1994), The War (2007), and The Vietnam War (2017); Kerry Smith, senior vice president at ABC News; and Stephen D. Solomon, Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism at the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Submissions for the 2026-2027 Collier Awards cycle will open in September.
For questions about awardees, the Collier Awards, and The Collier Symposium, please visit the Collier Awards for Ethics in Journalism website or contact Ethics and Journalism Initiative Assistant Director Ryan Howzell at ryan.howzell@nyu.edu.
For questions related to Nathan Collier and his endowment of the Collier Awards, please contact office.chair@colliercompanies.com
