The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School announces the winner of the 2022 Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism:
Shawn Donnan is senior writer for Bloomberg News, where he covers economics with an emphasis on where policy meets people and the real world. His reporting appears across the organization’s many platforms from the Bloomberg Terminal to Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.
He joined Bloomberg in 2018 from the Financial Times where he served as World Trade Editor. Prior to that, Donnan was the FT’s World News Editor, coordinating the paper’s global coverage of economics and politics. Over a 16-year career at the FT he also worked as a correspondent and editor in Indonesia and Hong Kong, from where he edited the paper’s China coverage.
Donnan began his career in journalism at the Associated Press, which he joined as an editorial assistant in the Baltimore bureau in 1993 after graduating from Boston University. As an Australian he is a fan of that nation’s cricket and rugby teams. But he also is an avid fan of the Arsenal Football Club and Boston Red Sox. He lives just outside Washington, DC, with his wife Rachel, two teenage children, and a handsome young rescue dog named Toby.
The 2022 Nyhan Prize selection committee, which included Professor Thomas Patterson, Nick Nyhan, James F. Smith, and former Nyhan Prize winner Cynthia Tucker, applauded Donnan’s bright, lyrical writing style and dedication to covering the true impacts of economic policy and political debates on everyday people. They noted that economic and political reporting does not often lend itself to these qualities, and Donnan’s masterful ability to report on complex policy issues with a deep focus on humanity made him a natural fit for the Nyhan Prize.
The Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism was established at the Shorenstein Center in memory of the late Boston Globe columnist and reporter David Nyhan, who for more than 30 years challenged the powerful and acted as a voice for those whose voices are seldom heard. It honors a political journalist who covers politics and social policy in the public interest and embodies David’s style of journalism that speaks to – and for – everyone. Nyhan was a fellow at the center in 2001, and the prize was established with support from a large group of his family and friends after his death in 2005.
A virtual conversation with Shawn Donnan, in celebration of his Nyhan Prize honors, will be held on February 28, 2023 at 4pm ET. Cynthia Tucker, Pulitzer and Nyhan Prize-winning syndicated columnist and Journalist in Residence at the University of South Alabama, will moderate.
Register here: https://shorensteincenter.org/new-event/2022-nyhan-prize-shawn-donnan/
