2022 Toner Prizes Winners

2022 Toner Prize for Excellence in National Political Reporting

The Washington Post

The Washington Post won for “The Attack.” The investigation into the causes, costs and aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol revealed how law enforcement agencies failed to heed mounting threats of violence in Washington, documented the bloody consequences of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric and mapped how a deep distrust of the voting process has taken hold across the country, shaking the underpinnings of democracy.

2022 Toner Prize for Excellence in Local Political Reporting

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The state politics team of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution won for “Inside the Campaign to Undermine Georgia’s Election.” The multipart digital package examined the period between the November 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, when Georgia was at the center of the biggest election dispute of modern American history. The project shines a light on the actions of public officials and others who worked to change the outcome of the election and sow suspicion that persists today about the integrity of elections in Georgia. Reporters were David Wickert, Mark Niesse, Greg Bluestein, Maya T. Prabhu, Tia Mitchell, Isaac Sabetai and Jim Galloway.

2022 Toner Prizes Finalists:

2022 National Toner Prize finalists

Jason DeParle of The New York Times for the “Pandemic, Policy and Poverty”

Christina A. Cassidy, Anthony Izaguirre and  Nicholas Riccardi of The Associated Press for “AP Investigation: Voter Fraud”

Linda So, Jason Szep, Peter Eisler, John Shiffman, Aram Roston, Brad Heath and Sam Hart of Reuters for “Campaign of Fear”

Isaac Arnsdorf, Jeremy Schwartz, Doug Bock Clark, Alexandra Berzon and Anjeanette Damon of ProPublica and The Texas Tribune for “Destabilizing Local Elections”

Luke Mogelson of The New Yorker for “The Storm”

2022 Local Toner Prize finalists

Ronald J. Hansen and Jen Fifield of The Arizona Republic for “Democracy in Doubt”

Zoe Greenberg, Milton Valencia, Stephanie Ebbert, Danny McDonald, Emma Platoff, Elizabeth Koh and Andrew Ryan of The Boston Globe for coverage of Boston’s historic mayoral race

Andrew Seidman and Jonathan Lai of The Philadelphia Inquirer for “The Voter Fraud Myth and Democracy in Pennsylvania”

Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for reporting on Georgia’s political transformation

Ann Choi, Will Welch, Monica Cordero, Alyssa Katz, Greg B. Smith, Yoav Gonen, Rachel Holliday Smith Allison Dikanovic, Jere Hester, Hasani Gittens, Terry Parris Jr. and Ben Fractenberg of THE CITY for  “NYC Campaign 2021: Civic Newsroom”

Ken Armstrong and Meribah Knight of WPLN News & ProPublica for lack “Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge.”

2022 Toner Prizes Judges

Christina Bellantoni

Christina Bellantoni is a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. She also serves as the director of the Annenberg Media Center student newsroom.

Over her 20 years in journalism, Bellantoni worked as a reporter and editor, behind the camera as a producer and in front of it as an analyst on national television. She has covered local, state and federal government, along with four presidential campaigns and the White House. At the Los Angeles Times, Bellantoni was an assistant managing editor. Under her leadership, the California politics team expanded and earned statewide recognition for innovative coverage of politics and for hard-hitting sexual harassment investigations that prompted two Assembly resignations and brought more transparency to California’s state capital. For 12 years, Bellantoni was a journalist in Washington, D.C., where she served as editor-in-chief of the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call and was the political editor at the PBS NewsHour, among other roles.

Lynette Clemetson

Lynette Clemetson is director of Wallace House, home of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists and the Livingston Awards at the University of Michigan. Her career spans a range of platforms. She was senior director of strategy and content initiatives for NPR, guiding projects across broadcast, digital and events. She was a domestic correspondent for The New York Times and Newsweek and an international correspondent for Newsweek based in Hong Kong. She is founding managing editor of The Root, launched in 2008 for The Washington Post Company with Henry Louis Gates Jr. In addition to serving on the advisory committee of the Toner Prizes, Lynette serves on the boards of the Student Press Law Center and Forbidden Stories, an award-winning news organization dedicated to publishing the work of journalists who have been threatened, jailed or killed. She is a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and she serves on the advisory council for PBS FRONTLINE.

Maralee Schwartz

Maralee Schwartz spent 30 years at The Washington Post, mainly as a political reporter and editor. As national political editor, she led an award-winning team of reporters in coverage that included three presidential elections of both the Clinton and Bush White House. She was a fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in 2007. Schwartz left The Post in August 2008 to become the Edward R. Murrow Visiting Lecturer for the Practice of Press and Public Policy at the Kennedy School. She returned to The Post for several months in 2010 as interim political editor. She is a contributing editor at Columbia Journalism Review and an advisory board member of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University.

Joseph B. Treaster

Joseph B. Treaster is a professor at the University of Miami’s School of Communication and a contributor to The New York Times and other publications. He was a reporter and foreign correspondent for The Times for more than 30 years before joining the University as the John S. Knight Chair in Cross Cultural Communication. Treaster has worked in nearly 100 countries in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Europe. He is the author of three books and has written for The Atlantic, Harper’s, Rolling Stone and other national magazines. He focuses on the environment, international affairs and the arts. He is a former Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow.

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