Sidney Hillman Foundation names winners of 2025 prizes for journalism in service of the common good
NEW YORK – The Sidney Hillman Foundation announces today the winners of the 75th annual Hillman Prizes for journalism:
Book – Jonathan Blitzer, Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America and the Making of a Crisis, Penguin Press
Newspaper – Jennifer Gollan and Susie Neilson, “Fast and Fatal,” San Francisco Chronicle
Magazine – Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti, “The Unpunished: How Extremists Took Over Israel,” The New York Times Magazine
Broadcast – Dan Slepian, Dawn Porter and Kimberley Ferdinando, The Sing Sing Chronicles, NBC News Studios and MSNBC Films
Opinion & Analysis – Elie Mystal, Justice Correspondent, The Nation
The SEIU Award for Reporting on Racial and Economic Justice – Margie Mason and Robin McDowell, “Prison to Plate,” The Associated Press
In a seven-part series, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Jennifer Gollan and Susie Neilson uncovered and examined more than 3,300 deaths that resulted from police chases between 2017 and 2022, revealing a dramatic undercount by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Most of these chases began over minor infractions—or no crime at all—and most victims were bystanders and passengers. There is no binding national standard for when or how police should chase suspects.
NBC News Studios’ four-part documentary series, The Sing Sing Chronicles, follows 22 years of original investigative reporting by NBC News journalist Dan Slepian. He helped overturn wrongful convictions in five New York City homicide cases, freeing six innocent men.
In “The Unpunished,” Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti reveal Israel’s dark secret: Since the 1970s, the police, Shin Bet, the IDF, prosecutors, politicians, and the courts have been failing to enforce the law on ultranationalist and extremist settlers. As a result, they terrorize Palestinians in the West Bank, they target Israelis who try to stop them, and they have seized power in the government, potentially jeopardizing the future of the country itself.
Jonathan Blitzer’s Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here is an urgent, intimate, extraordinary book on the origin story of our immigration and border crisis, told through meticulous reporting and indelible characters.
Elie Mystal, The Nation’s justice correspondent, wins for his indispensable legal analysis of the many ways in which the courts fundamentally shape American democracy. His work is grounded in the recognition of the Supreme Court’s supreme power as a policy-making institution in this country, and his writing seeks to deepen public understanding of the enormity of its influence.
The 2025 SEIU Award for reporting on racial and economic justice goes to the Associated Press series “Prison to Plate.”Reporters Margie Mason and Robin McDowell linked hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of prison labor to the bottom lines of some of the world’s biggest companies. They showed how laws have changed and morphed over time, allowing the prison labor industry to quietly grow alongside soaring incarceration rates.
This year’s prizes were judged by Jamelle Bouie, columnist for The New York Times; Maria Carrillo, former enterprise editor Tampa Bay Times/Houston Chronicle; Alix Freedman, global editor, Ethics and Standards, Reuters; Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large, The American Prospect; and Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director and publisher, The Nation.
Reporting by this year’s prize winners has had significant positive impact:
- The San Franciso Chronicle’s series spurred legislative and policy changes. NHTSA updated its data. Members of Congress called on the Justice Department, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and NHTSA to accurately count how many people die in pursuits. Hawaii lawmakers proposed new legislation; and the New York University School of Law’s Policing Project developed model national rules for state lawmakers across the country.
- The Sing Sing Chronicles powerfully reveals the titanic effort, perseverance and resilience required by the innocent who fight to reclaim their freedom. Dan Slepian’s years of dedication led to the release of six innocent men from prison, including JJ Velazquez in September 2024, who had been incarcerated for 24 years. He is now a renowned justice reform advocate. Viewers are forced to confront the seismic toll of wrongful convictions, and a system that has been unwilling to admit to them.
- After the AP’s reporting, major businesses including Trader Joe’s, McDonald’s and Cargill—America’s biggest private company—cut ties with prison farms or with third-party companies using incarcerated workers who can be punished if they refuse to work. In response to a federal class-action lawsuit, a judge ordered protections for incarcerated workers for the first time, such as sunscreen, shade and mandatory breaks.
- “The Unpunished” had an immediate impact, both on the residents of a Palestinian village highlighted in the story and on the world’s understanding of unequal justice in Israel. The Palestinian villagers brought a case to the Israeli Supreme Court and, in July, the court ruled that the military must protect the residents as they returned to the village.
The Sidney Hillman Foundation is also delighted to announce that Steven Fraser is the recipient of the 2025 Sol Stetin Award for Labor History. Fraser, a writer, historian, teacher, editor, and political activist is the biographer of the Foundation’s namesake, Sidney Hillman, and it is serendipitous that he receives this overdue recognition on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Hillman Prizes.
“The Hillman Prizes for journalism honor the legacy of Sidney Hillman, an immigrant who dedicated his life to building ‘a better America’. On this 75th year of the annual prizes, many of us are extremely concerned about the America we find ourselves in today,” said Bruce Raynor, President of the Foundation, “Journalists, and those who actively support the free press, give us hope that we will hold onto our free and democratic society.”
The Sidney Hillman Foundation will host a celebration of the honorees on May 13th in New York.
About the Hillman Prizes
This year’s honorees follow in the trailblazing tradition of past Hillman Prize winners, ranging from Murray Kempton in 1950 for his articles on labor in the South; to Edward R. Murrow in 1954 for his critical reports on civil liberties and Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare; to Julie K. Brown in 2019 for her stories about the sex crimes and sweetheart deals of Jeffrey Epstein; and Ari Berman’s 2022 reporting on voter suppression.
The Hillman Prizes are open to journalists globally for any published reporting that is widely accessible to a U.S. audience. Winners are awarded a $5,000 prize, and a certificate designed by New Yorker cartoonist Edward Sorel.
The Sidney Hillman Foundation also awards the annual Canadian Hillman Prizes. This year, Globe and Mail reporters Grant Robertson and Kathryn Blaze Baum won the print/digital prize for “The Algorithm,” a story about failures at the top of the Canada’s food safety system, resulting in a listeria outbreak and avoidable deaths.
CTV’s W5 team Avery Haines, Eric Szeto, Jerry Vienneau, Maria Teresa Scotti and Angelo Altomare won the broadcast prize for “Narco Jungle: The Darién Gap,” which takes the viewer along on a daring and perilous journey. The team documents and exposes the harrowing realities faced by migrants fleeing economic collapse, political instability, and religious persecution.
And Drew Anderson of The Narwhal won the local reporting prize for his exposé, “We Will Not Lie.” He revealed that when the Alberta government put a stop to new renewable energy projects for seven months, it tried to pin the decision on independent provincial agencies. The Narwhal revealed the truth, that the moratorium was the government’s own decision, and the agencies refused take the fall.
Sidney Hillman, the founder and president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), believed that a free press was essential to a fair and equal society. The Sidney Hillman Foundation has sought to carry on his legacy by honoring journalists who illuminate the great issues of our times—from the search for a basis for lasting peace, to the need for better housing, medical care and employment for all people, and to the promotion of civil liberties, democracy, and the battle against discrimination of all kinds.
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