Awarded to Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times for a compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men, creating a sophisticated statistical model that The Banner shared with other newsrooms. Also nominated as finalists in this category were: Mike Reicher, Lynda Mapes and Fiona Martin of The Seattle Times for their investigative series revealing how the Washington state government spent $1 million per day on construction that failed to safeguard either the salmon or the tribal treaty rights it was meant to protect; and Katey Rusch and Casey Smith, contributors, San Francisco Chronicle, in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program for a multiyear investigation into a secret system of legal settlements that concealed California police misconduct for decades and kept offending officers in positions of power.
