2026 Goldsmith Awards Ceremony

The annual Goldsmith Awards, presented by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, honors public service journalism that has had an impact on United States public policy and the functioning of government. Each year the awards honor six reporting teams (five finalists and one winner) for the Investigative Reporting Prize, one award for the Explanatory Reporting Prize, and two awards for books published in the last year on a topic at the intersection of media, politics, and public policy. The Center and the Documentary Film in the Public Interest Initiative (DFPI) will also recognize THE ALABAMA SOLUTION, directed and produced by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, with a Special Citation for Documentary Film at the Ceremony.

The 2026 Career Awardee for Excellence in Journalism is Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of The Atlantic and moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic on PBS. Goldberg is the featured speaker at this year’s ceremony, where he will share his experiences as both a journalist and editorial leader, discuss the news industry’s evolving ethical and editorial challenges, and reflect on the importance of The Atlantic as a critical resource for investigation, analysis, and ideas in a fireside chat with Shorenstein Center Director Nancy Gibbs, followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. The in-person event will be livestreamed at GoldsmithAwards.org and ShorensteinCenter.org.

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic and is the moderator of Washington Week With The Atlantic on PBS. He joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and in 2016 was named editor in chief, the 15th person to serve as editor in The Atlantic’s 168-year history. During his editorship, The Atlantic has set new audience and subscription records, and won its first-ever Pulitzer Prizes. In 2022, 2023, and 2024, The Atlantic received the National Magazine Award for General Excellence from the American Society of Magazine Editors, the top award in the industry.

Before joining The Atlantic, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent and then the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. Earlier in his career, he was a writer for The New York Times Magazine. He began his career as a police reporter for The Washington Post. Goldberg is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror and On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump. A former fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, he also served as a public-policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and as the distinguished visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Goldberg is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for Reporting; the Daniel Pearl Award for Reporting; the Overseas Press Club’s award for human-rights reporting; the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists Prize for best investigative reporting.