Online Journalism Awards Recognize Pulitzer Center Projects

The Online News Association (ONA) announced finalists and a partial list of winners for the 2025 Online Journalism Awards, including six Pulitzer Center-supported projects. The awards drew 1,200 entries representing 92 countries and honor “excellence and innovation in digital journalism,” according to ONA. Award winners for 17 of the 24 categories were announced on Thursday, August 28. The remaining categories will be announced in person at the 2025 ONA Conference in New Orleans on Friday, September 12.

Winners

Image

Taking home two awards, Breaking the Nets—by grantees Monica Jha, Shamsheer Yousaf, and Sriram Vittalamurthy for The Wire—won for Excellence in Social Justice Reporting and Topical Reporting: Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Identity. It was also a finalist for Excellence in Visual Digital Storytelling. The project uses multimedia to tell the stories of fisherwomen in India. Over 12.3 million women work in fishing in India, but their labor is largely unacknowledged in government policies and the male-dominated industry. Now, they are organizing for their rights. This is the latest recognition for the project, which has received numerous awards.

Jha shared the judges’ comments with the Pulitzer Center: “The judges said the winning entry tells powerful stories through deeply moving visuals, drawing the audience in, and fully immersing them in the woman's narrative. The judges continue to hear the sounds of the fishing and the words of the women, even when they didn't speak their language, for a long time after viewing this portfolio,” read one comment. “The judges found that the winner's excellent use of multimedia helped bring critical stories to light. The innovative storytelling, the visuals, and the use of sound amazed the audiences,” they said.

See more early winners here.

Finalists

Image

Misplaced Trust, by a collaborative team from Grist and High Country News, was a finalist for the Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award, Medium Newsroom. The investigation uncovered how U.S. land-grant universities profit from extractive industries on millions of acres of land taken from Indigenous nations. Follow-up stories found that trust lands also benefit K-12 schools, hospitals, and prison systems, often in violation of tribal sovereignty and established borders. The ongoing project previously won an Online Journalism Award in 2024.

The Cost of Convenience (The Philippines and the AI Boom), by Karol Ilagan, formerly a Pulitzer Center AI Accountability Network Fellow and now the Pulitzer Center’s AI Spotlight Series coordinator, was a finalist for the Excellence in Technology Reporting, Small Newsroom award. The project used in-depth data journalism to investigate the algorithms behind Grab, a popular ride-sharing app in the Philippines, and how it affects consumers and drivers. More broadly, the investigations question what happens when artificial intelligence controls prices—who benefits, and who is put at risk. The stories were published by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and Puma Podcast; the Pulitzer Center data and research team also contributed to the data visualizations.

To be announced

Image

A finalist for the Knight Award for Public Service, A Poisoned Community—by StoryReach U.S. Fellow Jasmine Aguilera and Cassandra Garibay for El Tímpano—revealed pervasive lead problems in Oakland, California. Lead poisoning disproportionately affects Latino and immigrant communities in Oakland, and millions of dollars of funds are available to address the issue, yet government action has been slow and ineffective. As part of the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. initiative, the project focused on community engagement, inviting Oakland’s Latino community to be involved through educational workshops, tabling, door-knocking, and SMS outreach offering free lead testing. The series saw immediate impact: A lead hazard advisory agency sent a letter to Oakland city officials urging them to address lead hazards.

In the Excellence in AI Innovation category, Death Flights, by grantee Alexa Vélez Zuazo for Mongabay, is a finalist for “using AI to reveal illegal narco-trafficking airstrips deep in the Amazon.” Death Flights tracks drug trafficking in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, undercovering illegal airstrips within Indigenous territories that are used to transport drugs to countries like Bolivia or Colombia. The Mongabay Latin America team, in alliance with Earth Genome, developed an AI tool to review satellite imagery and compare it to official sources, finding airstrips that were previously hidden in the dense forest. This evidence of organized crime also helped the team investigate violence against Peruvian Indigenous leaders, at least 11 of whom have been killed in communities near the airstrips.

From grantees Zachary T. Sampson, Shreya Vuttaluru, and Bethany Barnes for the Tampa Bay Times, Wasting Away tells the story of a destroyed ecosystem and manatee habitat. The project is a finalist for The University of Florida Award for Investigative Data Journalism. The Indian River Lagoon, once a sanctuary for manatees, was wrecked by pollution; the Times traced a lack of environmental regulation that let it happen. The investigation also found that a quarter of Florida waterways are facing similarly dangerous levels of pollution, and the manatee crisis can only be solved by restoring water quality. The reporting will continue throughout the year.

See the full list of finalists here.