Columbia Journalism School today announced the 16 winners of the 2019 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards honoring outstanding audiovisual reporting in the public interest. The winners will be celebrated at Low Memorial Library on Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2019 at the 77th annual awards ceremony, hosted by CBS News 60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl and NPR’s Ailsa Chang, host of All Things Considered.
Twelve of this year’s duPont Batons will be awarded to reporting teams led by women. The 2019 winners also highlight the growth in newsroom partnerships that pool resources and skills to deliver impactful news stories.
“In a year of big news and upheaval for women, it is fitting that there has also been an extraordinary number of journalistic achievements by women,”said duPont Jury Chair and former NBC News Executive Cheryl Gould. "We expect this welcome trend to continue and are confident that one day soon, this will go from being a notable trend to an established fact."
WNYC and ProPublica’s joint reporting project, “Trump, Inc.,” investigated President Trump’s businesses, won a Silver Baton, as did, "Caught," a podcast hosted by Kai Wright that followed teenage offenders stuck in the juvenile justice system.
Below is the complete list of 2019 duPont winners:
CBS Miami (WFOR)
The Everglades: Where Politics, Money and Race Collide
An engaging hour-long documentary that seamlessly explored the deeper environmental, political and social roots of Florida’s contaminated Everglades.
CBS News 60 Minutes / The Washington Post
The Whistleblower & Too Big to Prosecute
In this joint investigative series, 60 Minutes and The Washington Post exposed a war within the DEA over the pharmaceutical industry’s role in the opioid epidemic.
CNN Films
RBG
The first theatrical documentary to present a comprehensive and intimate portrait of a sitting Supreme Court Justice, RBG is an engrossing, entertaining lesson in women’s rights and constitutional law.
CNN International & Nima Elbagir
Human Rights Abuses Reporting
Elbagir's fearless reporting across Africa, from a modern day slave market in Libya, to child labor in Congo and a smuggler’s network in Nigeria, documented rarely seen exploitation and corruption.
EPIX, Gidalya Pictures & Blumhouse
This Is Home: A Refugee Story
This feature-length documentary gave unique insight into the mechanics and challenges of refugee assimilation, with extraordinary depth and detail, to capture what it is to be a refugee.
Florentine Films & WETA
The Vietnam War
The Vietnam War is a major achievement in documentary storytelling; a ten-part, 18-hour documentary film series ten years in the making, that viscerally brought the war and the chaotic epoch it encompassed to life.
FRONTLINE PBS
Gold Baton:
A standard-bearer and innovator, this year FRONTLINE produced an exceptional lineup of outstanding programs that illustrated how well it both champions traditional documentaries while also forging ahead with cutting edge, adaptive content, a s exemplified by these programs:
Bitter Rivals: Iran and Saudi Arabia
Life on Parole
Living with Murder
Mosul
Myanmar's Killing Fields
Putin's Revenge
The Gang Crackdown
The Last Generation
HBO
I Am Evidence
Focusing on three American cities grappling with tens of thousands of untested rape kits, this compelling and disturbing feature-length documentary detailed the experiences of four victims caught up in a fundamentally flawed criminal justice system.
NBC Bay Area KNTV Investigative Unit
Drivers Under Siege
The hard-hitting local investigative series provided shocking testimony about the increase in violent attacks on Bay Area bus drivers, which brought the problem to light and ultimately helped address it.
Reveal | PRX | PBS NewsHour | Associated Press
Kept Out
This painstakingly researched exposé on modern day “redlining”- denying mortgages and home loans to people of color - analyzed over 30 million records to provide a meticulous, multi-platform indictment of today’s banking system.
RMPBS Insight with John Ferrugia
“Imminent Danger”
With remarkable access to the families of mentally disturbed killers, Rocky Mountain PBS took an informative deep dive into Colorado’s “Imminent Danger” rule that critics argue does not allow enough early intervention, especially for the mentally ill who own guns.
RYOT & Red Reel
On Her Shoulders
The artfully shot and edited documentary film chronicled a war crimes survivor’s story, using dense narrative layers to give context to an underreported international human rights crisis: ISIS’s persecution of the Yazidi people.
This American Life
Our Town
An engaging portrait of one Alabama town that has absorbed a decades-long surge in immigrant workers, this two-part radio program busted myths and offered important lessons for the rest of the country.
WNYC
Caught: The Lives of Juvenile Justice
With gripping personal stories and tense intimate scenes, this nine-episode podcast revealed a web-like juvenile justice system and explored its devastating long term effects on young people.
WNYC & ProPublica
Trump, Inc.
Throughout the first season of this collaborative reporting podcast, a team of investigative reporters expertly tackled the business relations between the Trump administration, the Trump family, the Trump business and the rest of the world.
WTSP & The Tampa Bay Times
Zombie Campaigns
The investigative partnership between WTSP and The Tampa Bay Times combined computer-assisted reporting with clever storytelling to expose loopholes in federal campaign laws that allowed politicians to continue using campaign funds long after they leave office, or even die.