2019 Communication Award Winners Announced
Aug.15, 2019
WASHINGTON — The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine announced today the recipients of the 2019 Communication Awards. Supported by the W.M. Keck Foundation since 2003 as part of the Keck Futures Initiative, these prestigious awards in four categories — each of which includes a $20,000 prize — recognize excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering, and medicine to the general public. That program has ended, and this will be the final year of these awards.
The winners will be honored during a ceremony on Oct. 16 in Washington, D.C.
“Congratulations to this year’s winners, who did an outstanding job communicating about complex issues related to science, technology, and health in innovative ways that really capture people’s attention and imagination,” said May Berenbaum, NAS member and chair of the awards selection committee, and professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Our committee feels privileged to have been part of this awards program over the years, and we are delighted that the recognition accorded to winners and finalists has helped advance careers in science communication while engendering in the public a fascination for and appreciation of science and scientists.”
Selected from 346 entries for works published or aired in 2018, the recipients of this year’s awards, along with each category’s finalists, are:
Book
Winner:
Carl Zimmer for “She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity” (Dutton – Penguin Random House LLC)
“A sweeping yet engaging examination from a personal perspective of the evolving nature of the scientific understanding of heredity across the centuries. The book debunks many of the insidious and profoundly unscientific distortions of heredity, including those that have provided faulty foundations for racism and eugenics – and illuminates the 21st century applications with the greatest promise for transforming people’s lives.” Finalists:
- Deborah Blum for “The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century” (Penguin Press)
- Charles Mann for “The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World” (Alfred A. Knopf)
- Lauren E. Oakes for “In Search of the Canary Tree: The Story of a Scientist, a Cypress, and a Changing World (Basic Books)
- Nick Pyenson for “Spying on Whales: The Past, Present, and Future of Earth’s Most Awesome Creatures” (Viking)
Film/Radio/TV
Winner:
Howard Berkes, Nicole Beemsterboer, Huo Jingnan, and Robert Benincasa of NPR for “Coal’s Deadly Dust”
“An exemplar of brilliant investigative journalism documenting the catastrophic public health consequences to coal miners and their communities when authorities make economic or policy decisions in the absence of scientific evidence or with its deliberate rejection.”Finalists:
- Greg Boustead, Ian Cheney, Derek Mead, and Thobey Campion of Sandbox Films and VICE Media for “The Most Unknown”
- Ari Daniel, Patrick Cox, and Nina Porzucki (freelance) for PRI’s “Where Does Language Come From?”
- Jessica Harrop, Azeen Ghorayshi, Cat Hartwell, and Joshua Weinstein (freelance) for Buzzfeed News and Netflix’s “Follow This: Life Support”
Newspaper/Magazine
Winner:
Tina Saey of Science News for “Genetic Testing Goes Mainstream”
“A timely, informative, and eminently readable series on the uses and limitations of DNA testing for both medical and ancestry purposes.”Finalists:
- Denise Grady of the New York Times for “Where a Sore Throat Becomes a Death Sentence”
- Antonio Regalado of MIT Technology Review for “Exclusive: Chinese Scientists are Creating CRISPR Babies”
- Melinda Wenner Moyer of Scientific American for “American Epidemic”
- Brooke Borel of Scientific American for “Clicks, Lies and Videotape”
Online
“Both winners optimize the online medium to explain the unintended and devastating environmental outcomes of decisions that ultimately cause the greatest harm to people who had no role in making them.”Winner:
Lisa Song, Al Shaw, and Katie Campbell of ProPublica, Patrick Michels of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, and Ranjani Chakraborty of Vox for “Flood Thy Neighbor”
“A regional view of what happens when levees constructed to protect one community against flooding lead to unanticipated inundation of neighboring communities.”Winner:
The GroundTruth Project and FRONTLINE PBS for “The Last Generation”
”Three children of the Marshall Islands share their hopes and fears for the future as they grapple with the possibility of seeing their homeland disappear due to rising sea levels.”Finalists:
- Peter Aldhous, BuzzFeed News, for “Wildfires: What Drives Them, and What is My Risk?”
- Julie Belluz, Eliza Barclay, Brigid McCarthy, and Gina Barton of Vox for “The Mysteries of Weight Loss”
- Naveena Sadasivam of the Texas Observer and Zoë Schlanger of Quartz for “Shallow Waters”
The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative was created in 2003 to encourage interdisciplinary research and was funded by a 15-year, $40 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation. For more information on the Futures Initiative and the Communication Awards, please visit www.keckfutures.org. For more information about the W.M. Keck Foundation, please visit http://www.wmkeck.org.
The awards ceremony will take place on Oct. 16 at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C. The ceremony is free and open to the public. Please register to attend by Oct. 4 to [email protected].
Follow the conversation on Twitter using #NASEMCommAward.
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine. The Academies operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.
Contacts:
William Kearney, Executive Director
Molly Galvin, Director of Executive Communications
Office of News and Public Information
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