Announcing the semifinalists for the 2026 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting

Our judging committee was tasked with reviewing over 100 entries for this year’s Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. The following semifinalists are the top 30 entries that our judges deemed to be of extremely high quality and in keeping with the Prize’s criteria for impact on US government, public policy, or the practice of politics. In the coming weeks, the finalists for the Goldsmith Prize will be announced from this esteemed group, with the winner announced at the Goldsmith Awards Ceremony on April 9.

The semifinalists for the 2026 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting are listed here in alphabetical order, with links to the original reporting. Short descriptions were submitted as part of the entry.

2026 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting Semifinalists:

Abuse of Power: Beyond the Goon Squad
Brian Howey, Nate Rosenfield, Mukta Joshi, Jerry Mitchell, Steph Quinn, Sarah Cohen
Mississippi Today, The New York Times
A Mississippi sheriff survived a police brutality scandal, but reporters who kept on the story exposed a reign of terror throughout his department and abuses that spread across the state.

Broken Rehab   
Jordan Rau, Irena Hwang
KFF Health News
KFF Health News investigates where rehab falls short, leading to severe or even life-threatening injuries and exorbitant costs at specialized health care facilities.

Burned
Susie Neilson, Megan Fan Munce, Sara DiNatale
The San Francisco Chronicle
California’s largest home insurers use faulty algorithms and hidden cost-cutting schemes to drastically underpay policyholders after wildfires, exposing them to toxic contaminants, prolonged displacement and financial crisis.

Cancer Capitalism
Robert Langreth, Tanaz Meghjani, Caleb Melby, Anna Edney, John Tozzi, Rachael Dottle, Josyana Joshua, Henry Baker, Mathieu Benhamou
Bloomberg News
How cancer drugs have become a wildly lucrative business not just for pharma companies but hospitals and doctors, often without extending patients’ lives while exposing them to toxic harms and financial stress.

Caught in the Crackdown
Claire Healy, Ana Claudia Chacin, Shirsho Dasgupta, Churchill Ndonwie, David Goodhue, Ana Ceballos, Ben Wieder, Verónica Egui Brito, Syra Ortiz Blanes
Miami Herald, Tampa Bay Times
As Florida waged an unprecedented crackdown on immigration to support the Trump Administration’s mass deportation campaign, this reporting team exposed inhumane conditions and published exclusive reports on the immigrants and citizens whose lives were changed by the state’s policies.

Deadly Dust
Michael Sallah, Mike Wereschagin, Jimmy Cloutier, Anavi Prakash, Jessie Nguyen, Victoria Malis, Tianyi Wang
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Northwestern University’s Medill Investigative Lab
During the worst epidemic of black lung disease in a generation, the Mine Safety and Health Administration – the federal agency entrusted to protect miners – failed at nearly every level, from missed inspections of mines and gaps in detecting dangerous levels of coal dust, to failing to crack down on operators when the dust levels soared beyond the bounds of safety.

Death in Custody
Daja E. Henry, Mina Corpuz, Jerry Mitchell, Grant McLaughlin, Joseph Neff, Doug Livingston, Brittany Hailer, Mark Puente, Ilica Mahajan
The Marshall Project, Mississippi Today, Clarion Ledger, The Mississippi Link, Albany Times-Union and Investigative Post
This reporting team exposed how killings and fatal neglect behind bars are minimized or ignored nationwide, revealing the prison system’s failure to stop preventable deaths.

Exposed and Expendable
Hannah Dreier and the Staff of the New York Times
The New York Times
This investigation uncovered decades of government failure that exposed wildfire fighters to toxic smoke, with many falling ill and dying; the government knew the risk but banned them from wearing masks.

Exposing misconduct in L.A. County’s historic $4-billion sex abuse settlement
Rebecca Ellis
Los Angeles Times
A series of investigations uncovered allegations of fraud, unethical behavior and potentially illegal conduct by a law firm at the center of a record $4-billion settlement with Los Angeles County over sexual abuse in government-run facilities, prompting the district attorney’s office to launch a criminal probe and politicians to push for changes to state law.

Failed to Death
Joaquin Palomino, Cynthia Dizikes
The San Francisco Chronicle
This reporting team showed how California is committing more and more people to psychiatric hospitals run by for-profit companies, with devastating results.

Hidden at Home
Ashley Balcerzak, Jean Rimbach
NorthJersey.com / The Record
In New Jersey’s $1.5 billion group home system for adults with developmental disabilities, the state fails to act against poorly performing providers and does not investigate all unexpected deaths, leaving a system where abuse and neglect are widespread and residents die in preventable ways due to poor care.

Holding Los Angeles’ Homeless Services Authority accountable for transparency failures
Nick Gerda, Jordan Rynning, Aaron Schrank
LAist
LAist’s extensive and ongoing reporting on the money trail powering the L.A. region’s homeless services agency exposed leadership failures and documented extensive transparency issues. 

Hope Florida
Alexandra Glorioso, Lawrence Mower, Justin Garcia
Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald
This investigation showed how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis secretly steered more than $35 million in taxpayer dollars to fight his political battles.

Housing Hustle: A KARE 11 Recovery Inc. Investigation
A.J. Lagoe, Kelly Dietz, Gary Knox, Steve Eckert
KARE-TV
KARE 11’s “Housing Hustle” investigation drove sweeping state reforms and waves of federal probes and charges as it exposed a massive, organized fraud scheme within Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) program – a Medicaid-funded safety net meant to help people with disabilities and those facing homelessness find and keep housing.

ICE and Abortions: What Police Really Use Flock Cameras For
Joseph Cox, Jason Koebler
404 Media
This investigation revealed how local cops tapped into a nationwide network of AI-enabled cameras and license plate readers on behalf of ICE, often breaking the law.

Invisible children – How Maryland lost track of its most vulnerable
Jessica Calefati, Lee O. Sanderlin
The Baltimore Banner
Reporters at The Baltimore Banner exposed Maryland’s repeated failure to properly track deaths from child abuse or neglect, prompting officials to overhaul the way these fatalities are documented and studied in hopes of preventing future tragedies.

Jailed and Pregnant
Mackenzie Mays, Jon Schuppe,
Bloomberg Law, NBC News
Pregnant women say their cries for help were ignored as they miscarried or gave birth in county jail cells, according to a yearlong Bloomberg Law and NBC News investigation that had an immediate impact.

Killer Train
Daniel Rivero, Brittany Wallman, Joshua Ceballos, Aaron Leibowitz, Susan Merriam, Shradha Dinesh, Allison Beck
WLRN News, Miami Herald
A team of reporters revealed that more than 190 people have been killed in crashes with Brightline trains since 2017, making it the deadliest major passenger train in the nation, even as its private owner has received nearly $500 million in taxpayer funding while safeguards continue to lag.

L.A. firestorms: Uncovering how government failed the public
Alene Tchekmedyian, Paul Pringle, Tony Briscoe, Terry Castleman, Rebecca Ellis, Sean Greene, Noah Haggerty, Ian James, Dakota Smith, Hayley Smith
Los Angeles Times
After January’s catastrophic Eaton and Palisades fires killed 31 and leveled two communities, the L.A. Times exposed systemic failures in firefighting, evacuations and cleanup.

President Trump’s Self-Enrichment
Eric Lipton, David Yaffe-Bellany, Ben Protess, Tripp Mickle, Bradley Hope, Paul Mozur, Andrea Fuller, Sharon LaFraniere, Seamus Hughes, Kenneth P. Vogel, Karen Yourish, Cecelia Kang, Ryan Mac, Theodore Schleifer, Charlie Smart, Elena Shao 
The New York Times
This investigative series revealed the scope of President Trump’s enrichment of himself, along with his patrons and business partners.

RX Roulette: The FDA’s Dangerous Gamble on America’s Drugs
Debbie Cenziper, Megan Rose, Brandon Roberts
ProPublica
A secret group inside the Food and Drug Administration allowed dangerous drugmakers formally banned from the U.S. market to continue selling generic drugs to unsuspecting Americans, one in a series of failures to protect the public from unsafe or ineffective medication.

Spotlight: Snitch City 
Dugan Arnett, Andrew Ryan, Brendan McCarthy, Kristin Nelson
The Boston Globe
Spotlight: Snitch City – a six-part serialized podcast and multimedia series from The Globe Spotlight Team – uncovered rampant police misconduct and explored the troubling, clandestine world of confidential informants.

The Alabama Solution
Andrew Jarecki, Charlotte Kaufman, Beth Shulburne, Christopher Izor, Gabe Murray
Alabama Film Project, HBO Documentary
THE ALABAMA SOLUTION, a documentary feature, follows incarcerated men exposing a cover-up in America’s deadliest prison system.

The Body Shops
Fred Schulte
KFF Health News, NBC News
The Body Shops series examines the rise of cosmetic surgery chains, many funded by private equity and selling thousands of patients low-cost body contouring procedures that have prompted numerous medical malpractice lawsuits alleging serious and painful medical complications, including more than a dozen deaths.

The End of Aid: Trump Destroyed USAID. What Happens Now?
Brett Murphy, Anna Maria Barry-Jester
ProPublica
The U.S. Agency for International Development saved lives and promoted American interests around the globe, but as the Trump administration dismantled USAID and cut off funding, ProPubica reporters investigated the fallout, naming names of responsible Trump officials, uncovering secret memos and detailing shocking incidents, unequivocally connecting the most serious harm—the deaths of people, including children, who depended on this aid—to the officials’ decisions to end it. 

The Legacy of Luckey
Alexa York
The Blade
An investigation that exposed the toxic legacy of the former Cold War town of Luckey, Ohio, prompting action by local, state and federal authorities.

The poisonous lead trade
Will Fitzgibbon, Peter Goodman, Samuel Granados, Taylor Turner, Finbarr O’Reilly, Carmen Abd Ali, Melanie Bencosme
The Examination, The New York Times
The American auto industry has ignored decades of warnings about the consequences of using lead that has been recycled unsafely and now relies on shoddy, overseas factories that have poisoned workers and children, in some cases causing irreversible damage.

Unprotected
Sandra Peddie, Grant Parpan, Nicole Fuller, Shari Einhorn, Macy Egeland
Newsday
The case of a 14-year-old girl victimized by a trafficking and drug network on Long Island exposes a systemic failure to protect vulnerable minors and highlights the pervasive, often hidden nature of sex trafficking across the region.

VA disability benefits investigation
Craig Whitlock, Lisa Rein, Caitlin Gilbert
The Washington Post
Military veterans are swamping the Department of Veterans Affairs with dubious and fraudulent disability claims — and the VA itself is helping them exploit the system.

Vicious: Dog attacks maim, disfigure and kill every year. How Ohio law fails victims
Laura Bischoff, Stephanie Warsmith
The USA Today Ohio network which includes The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Columbus Dispatch, The Akron Beacon Journal and The Canton Repository
Ohio changed it vicious dog laws after a team of reporters uncovered severe injuries and deaths due to reckless owners.