Winners
2026 winners for work published in 2025 are featured below.
Ages at time of story publication.
LOCAL REPORTING
William Skipworth, 27, of The New Hampshire Bulletin for “A System of Harm,” an investigative series revealing systemic failures and horrific cases of abuse in New Hampshire’s taxpayer-funded and state-regulated disability care system. Drawing on court records, official documents and interviews with victims’ families, Skipworth chronicled vulnerable individuals subjected to daily beatings, rape and sexual assault, along with caregiver neglect that in some cases resulted in death.
“We often aim to measure our moral progress by how we care for the most vulnerable. Yet, when William Skipworth tried to assess a system touting its treatment of children and adults with disabilities, he met a wall of official silence. It would have been easy to move on in a newsroom of only three reporters. Instead, his skillful, tenacious quest brought lucid humanity to a pattern of hidden abuses, seizing public attention and empowering families to speak for those who cannot.”
— Evan Osnos, Livingston Awards national judge
Read William Skipworth’s Winning Work
Watch The Livingston Interview with William Skipworth
NATIONAL REPORTING
Hannah Natanson, 29, of The Washington Post, for “Trump’s Reshaping of the Federal Government,” a series that revealed the far-reaching impact of DOGE’s sweeping policy changes. Through social media and encrypted Signal communications, dozens and sometimes hundreds of government employees wrote to her daily, describing their despair at seeing agencies and the mission they believed in crippled, and providing firsthand accounts and insights into inefficiencies stemming from the DOGE cuts.
“The Trump administration’s remake of the federal government calls journalism to some of its highest purposes: exacting comprehensive coverage; sensitive portraits of results and impact; careful reconciliation of promised outcomes versus real effects and consequences. Hannah Natanson of The Washington Post aces all three in her series of stories about the radical changes in Washington, with help from a network of more than 1,200 sources and unflinching determination. It matters immensely, in a time of both quiet and unwieldy oppression of counternarrative, that Natanson’s work continues despite an FBI raid of her home. This was not just journalism of excellence. It was journalism powered by courage.”
— Stephen Henderson, Livingston Awards national judge
Read Hannah Natanson’s Winning Work
Watch The Livingston Interview with Hannah Natanson
INTERNATIONAL REPORTING
Gerardo del Valle, 34, Alejandro Bonilla Suárez, 33 and Edwin Corona Ramos, 33, of ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News, for “Taken to CECOT,” video documentaries centered on three men’s first-person accounts of being detained by ICE and deported to a prison in El Salvador accused of widespread human rights abuses, despite reporting finding no known criminal records or evidence of gang affiliations for any of the three men. In Spanish with English subtitles, the videos humanize their experiences and document a dramatic shift in U.S. policy that tests both moral and legal boundaries.
“Well before recent reporting on the government targeting and deporting people with no criminal records, this team of reporters exposed the practice where simple immigration violations resulted in horrific torture at the CECOT facility in El Salvador. The investigation found that more than half of the 238 deportees were labeled as having no criminal record in the U.S., and only six had violent convictions. Nearly half were deported in the middle of their immigration cases. ‘Taken to CECOT’ is the story of our age right now, or carelessness combined with cruelty, where the demonization of the immigrant results in a nightmare for justice too.”
— Kara Swisher, Livingston Awards national judge
Read Gerardo del Valle, Alejandro Bonilla Suárez and Edwin Corona Ramos’ Winning Work