Our judging committee was tasked with reviewing over 120 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 3.
The semifinalists for the 2025 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.
A CT senator’s curious disability pension, workers’ comp case reveals shortfalls in systems
Hearst Connecticut Media Group
Jacqueline Rabe Thomas, Taylor Johnston
A months-long, rolling investigative series uncovered glaring, systemic violations, problems and loopholes across two state employee benefit programs that come at a massive expense for taxpayers of Connecticut.
Abused by the Badge
The Washington Post
Jessica Contrera, Jenn Abelson, John D. Harden, Staff of The Washington Post
Hundreds of law enforcement officers in the United States have sexually abused children, while officials at every level of the criminal justice system have failed to protect kids, punish abusers and prevent additional crimes.
Baltimore’s Overdose Crisis
The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times
Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme, Jessica Gallagher, Staff of the Baltimore Banner
Baltimore is enduring the worst drug overdose crisis in American history, exacerbated by city leaders’ failures, questionable treatment providers and a single generation of older Black men who have been struggling with drugs for most of their lives.
Boston Globe Spotlight investigation into Steward Health Care
The Boston Globe with contributions from OCCRP
Mark Arsenault, Jessica Bartlett, Elizabeth Koh, Liz Kowalczyk, Hanna Krueger, Chris Serres, Rebecca Ostriker, Catherine Carlock, Yoohyun Jung, Brendan McCarthy, Mark Morrow, Gordon Russell
Over 11 months, the Globe Spotlight Team took readers inside hospital rooms and Steward Health Care’s C-suite, detailing meetings where executives tried to bribe foreign officials and hatched billion-door deals to evade oversight and enrich themselves.
Chemical Capture
Civil Eats
Lisa Held
This investigation explores how pesticide companies gain and wield political power in state legislatures and try to shape state laws that benefit their bottom lines.
Dealing the Dead
NBC News Digital, NBC’s “Nightly News with Lester Holt,” Noticias Telemundo
Mike Hixenbaugh, Jon Schuppe, Susan Carroll, Anagilmara Vilchez, Liz Kreutz, Tyler Kingkade
NBC News exposed how a public university dissected and leased out the bodies of the unclaimed poor for medical research without people’s consent or their families’ knowledge, sparking sweeping changes and helping readers learn the fate of their loved ones.
Dying on Dart’s Watch
Injustice Watch
Carlos Ballesteros
Detainee deaths at the Cook County Jail hit a record high of 18 in 2023, many died amid oversight failures, inadequate supervision and substandard medical care, an Injustice Watch investigation found.
Fast and Fatal
The San Francisco Chronicle
Jennifer Gollan, Susie Neilson
Police chases, enabled by a cascade of government failures, killed more than 3,300 people in six years. Many were bystanders and a disparate number were Black.
Fields of Green
The Frontier and ProPublica
Garrett Yalch, Clifton Adcock, Sebastian Rotella
An investigative series revealing how Chinese mafias have come to dominate the U.S. illicit marijuana trade, exploiting weak regulations in Oklahoma and abusing thousands of immigrant workers.
Health Care’s Colossus
STAT
Bob Herman, Casey Ross, Tara Bannow, Lizzy Lawrence
This series reveals how UnitedHealth wields its unrivaled power to milk the health care system for profit, at the expense of taxpayers, patients, and clinicians.
Justice for Sandra Birchmore
The Boston Globe
Laura Crimaldi, Yvonne Abraham, Staff of The Boston Globe
Police were quick to say Sandra Birchmore hung herself, but Boston Globe reporter Laura Crimaldi probed deeper, raising questions about a Stoughton police officer Birchmore was dating that ultimately led to charges that he killed her and staged the scene to make it look like a suicide.
KARE 11 Investigates: Recovery Inc.
KARE-TV
A.J. Lagoe, Steve Eckert, Brandon Stahl, Gary Knox, Kelly Dietz
KARE 11’s “Recovery Inc.” investigation exposed systemic exploitation within Minnesota’s booming addiction recovery industry, revealing fraudulent practices that preyed on vulnerable populations and defrauded taxpayers.
Lethal Restraint
Associated Press, FRONTLINE (PBS), and the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland and at Arizona State University
Mitch Weiss, Reese Dunklin, Holbrook Mohr, Justin Pritchard, Serginho Roosblad, Ryan Foley, Martha Bellisle, Kristin Hall, John Seewer, Mike Shum, Sean Mussenden
This collaborative investigation documented and deeply analyzed a decade’s worth of deaths after police used not guns but what they call less-lethal force.
Life and death in Yakima
The Seattle Times
Daniel Beekman, Sydney Brownstone, Miyoko Wolf, Ramon Dompor
After Hien Trung Hua and Jim Curtice were arrested during mental health crises, their stories intersected in a haunting way that sheds light on the dangers and inequalities of the criminal legal system: Hua went to jail and died behind bars, whereas Curtice went free and helped obscure Hua’s death.
Life of the Mother
ProPublica
Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo, Stacy Kranitz
A landmark investigation into the unexamined, irreversible consequences of state abortion bans, including the preventable deaths of five women.
Medicare Inc.: How Giant Insurers Make Billions Off Seniors
The Wall Street Journal
Christopher Weaver, Tom McGinty, Anna Wilde Mathews, Mark Maremont, Andrew Mollica
The Wall Street Journal uncovered abusive practices within the Medicare system that harm the most vulnerable patients and cost taxpayers billions.
Oil companies leak toxic gas across Texas — making local residents sick
The Examination and The Houston Chronicle
Will Evans, Caroline Ghisolfi, Amanda Drane, Amelia Winger
Tens of thousands of people live close to oil and gas wells where they risk exposure to hazardous levels of hydrogen sulfide while regulators do little to protect them.
Our Troops’ Wounded Brains
The New York Times
Dave Philipps
U.S. troops are suffering profound brain injuries from their own weapons and equipment, a problem to which the military has been blind for decades; the damage comes not just from artillery, but also from crashing over waves or aerial dogfighting.
Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic
Reuters News
Joel Schectman, Chris Bing
The U.S. military launched a clandestine anti-vax propaganda program amid the COVID crisis to discredit China’s Sinovac inoculation, targeting the Filipino public and endangering countless lives.
Pets for Profit
The Los Angeles Times
Melody Gutierrez, Alene Tchekmedyian, David Wharton, Sean Greene
A deep look into exploitation within the nation’s multibillion-dollar pet industry, from the unregulated pipeline of puppies and other animals imported to California, to lax oversight that enables abuses, and a public that is often left in the dark about it all.
Power & Secrecy
The News & Observer
Dan Kane, David Raynor, Adam Wagner
Power & Secrecy shows the hidden cost as state lawmakers have given themselves more power while reducing transparency in their operations.
Press Democrat bid-rigging investigation
The Press Democrat
Andrew Graham
A Press Democrat investigation into no-bid county contracts shows millions in taxpayer money is unaccounted for, triggering local and FBI investigations and leading to criminal charges.
Preventing Disaster: Investigating Hospital Crashes
KXAN
Matt Grant, Josh Hinkle, Dalton Huey, Chris Nelson
When a car slammed into an Austin emergency room in early 2024, killing the driver and injuring five others, KXAN investigators dug into the safety concerns surrounding a hospital without security barriers at its entrance.
Right to Remain Secret
The San Francisco Chronicle and the UC Berkeley Investigative Reporting Program
Katey Rusch, Casey Smith
California police agencies used secret deals to whitewash the corruption and criminality of hundreds of officers, ensuring they could get hired again.
She Ate a Poppy Seed Salad Before Giving Birth. Then They Took Her Baby Away.
The Marshall Project and Reveal
Shoshana Walter
Widespread drug testing of pregnant women at childbirth leads to thousands of faulty positive reports, child welfare investigations and even some parents losing custody of their babies.
Silence & Secrets: An investigation into child sexual abuse by Kentucky coaches
The Louisville Courier Journal
Stephanie Kuzydym
Through an extensive search of news reports and court records, The Courier Journal found at least 80 cases of alleged child sexual misconduct by Kentucky middle- and high-school coaches during the past 15 years … and a culture that allows it to persist.
The Dark Side of Shen Yun
The New York Times
Nicole Hong, Michael Rothfeld
The popular dance group Shen Yun spent years exploiting its underage performers for financial gain, unchecked by regulators – until The New York Times started reporting on it.
The Gray Zone
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Cleo Krejci
“The Gray Zone” is an examination of the staffing crisis that is straining Wisconsin’s rapidly-growing assisted living industry by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Cleo Krejci, a former direct caregiver herself.
VANISHED
The Columbus Dispatch
Danae King, Max Filby
Columbus Dispatch journalists spent eight months investigating how law enforcement agencies search for missing persons and found that police often leave families in years of agonizing limbo while rarely using every tool at their disposal to bring missing Ohioans home.
When the Power Went Out: An examination of how Hurricane Beryl devastated the country’s fourth largest city and the energy company’s decisions that kept Houston in the dark
The Houston Chronicle
Neena Satija, Mike Morris, Claire Hao, Amanda Drane, Eric Dexheimer, Andrea Ball
After Hurricane Beryl left 2.2 million Houstonians in the dark, the Houston Chronicle investigated CenterPoint Energy, the utility company responsible for providing power, as well as the decisions it made, with little to no oversight from the state, to enrich itself at the expense of area residents.
