The Ethics and Journalism Initiative at New York University is delighted to announce nine awardees for the Peter F. Collier Awards for Ethics in Journalism, which honor journalism that meets the highest ethical standards in the face of pressure or incentives to do otherwise.
In a challenging year for journalists in the U.S., the Collier Awards commend rigorous and resolutely independent reporting. Among the awardees are the Associated Press, for maintaining its editorial standards after declining to change its style guidance regarding the Gulf of Mexico; The Atlantic, for its reporting on a Signal chat among the nation’s top national-security officials, and the Miami Herald for uncovering the identities of migrants held at Florida’s “black box” Alligator Alcatraz detention center.
The keynote speech will be delivered by renowned former Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron. As executive editor of The Boston Globe in 2002, he led his investigative team in uncovering systematic sexual abuse and cover-ups in the Catholic Church, earning the Pulitzer Prize and inspiring the Academy Award-winning movie “Spotlight.” Baron has been outspoken about the importance of press freedom and journalistic independence.
“Why practice ethical journalism when we are vilified for even our best work and when political leaders pressure news owners and their reporters to self-censor? ” asks Stephen J. Adler, founder and director of the Ethics and Journalism Initiative. “Simply because ethical journalism is stronger, more reliable journalism, reflecting our aspirations to provide the public with fair and accurate information and to hold our leaders to account. We are proud to host an award that celebrates such work and shows our audiences how, at our best, our profession strives to serve them.”
The Awards commend work in student, local, and national/international categories, published between September 2024 and August 2025. The awardees in each category, in alphabetical order by category, are:
Student Category
- New York University students Krish Dev and Dharma Niles for their breaking news and data reporting for the Washington Square News on a March 2025 cyberattack that revealed the private information of more than 3 million NYU applicants, students, and alumni.
- University of Texas Dallas students Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, Sherlyn Dominguez, and Tyler Crivella for their data-driven investigation for the independent student publication The Retrograde into UTD’s low rates of action on Title IX cases, amid restrictive gag order policies.
- Stanford University student Anna Yang for her searing account of a Stanford assault survivor’s journey through a protracted two-year Title IX process while their perpetrator faced criminal charges, for The Stanford Daily.
Local Category:
- The Miami Herald/The Tampa Bay Times for their reporting on the detention and harsh treatment of immigrants at the South Florida facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz.”
- Mississippi Today/The New York Times for their investigation of a notorious jail in which guards enlist prisoners to carry out violent attacks on other inmates in the guise of “enforcement.”
- The Record (New Jersey) for its reporting on widespread abuse and neglect in New Jersey’s $1.5 billion group home system for adults with developmental disabilities.
National/International Category:
- NBC News and Telemundo for their year-long investigation of the secretive and unregulated trade in body parts, in which a Texas academic health center provided researchers and medical technology companies with the corpses of poor, unhoused, mentally ill, and other vulnerable people without the knowledge or consent of their families.
- The Associated Press for its unyielding defense of ethical standards and principles after AP journalists were blocked from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and certain news events because the news organization would not change its style on the Gulf of Mexico.
- The Atlantic’s editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg and staff writer Shane Harris for intrepid reporting on national security officials, including U.S. Defense Department Secretary Pete Hegseth, using the Signal app to discuss highly sensitive details of an impending strike on Houthi militants in Yemen.
First, second, and third prizes will be announced at the annual Collier Awards ceremony, which will take place on Wednesday, April 15, 2025, from 5-9 pm at the Paley Center for Media in Manhattan.
The next day, Thursday, April 16, 2026, the Ethics and Journalism Initiative will host the Collier Awards Symposium, a series of public events at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute in which finalists will discuss their award-winning work and the ethical decision-making that enabled it. Attendance is free at both the Awards and Symposium. Registration is open here: https://collierawards.eventbrite.com.
The Peter F. Collier Awards for Ethics in Journalism are made possible through a generous gift from Nathan S. Collier, founder and chairman of the Collier Companies, in honor of his great-grand uncle, Peter F. Collier, who emigrated from Ireland in 1866, became a book publisher, and founded the renowned magazine, Collier’s Weekly, in 1888.
The award’s panel of judges is composed of eminent journalists from across the news media landscape: Dean Baquet, executive editor of the local investigations fellowship at the New York Times; Sewell Chan, senior fellow at USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy; Gina Chua, editor-at-large of Semafor and executive director of the Tow-Knight Center at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY; Lynette Clemetson, director of the Wallace House Center for Journalists at the University of Michigan; Adam Ganucheau, executive editor of Deep South Today; Lynn Novick, a documentary filmmaker whose works include Baseball (1994), The War (2007), and The Vietnam War (2017); Kerry Smith, senior vice president at ABC News; and Stephen D. Solomon, Marjorie Deane Professor of Journalism at the New York University Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
For questions about awardees and the Collier Awards & Symposium, please visit the Collier Award for Ethics in Journalism website or contact Ethics and Journalism Initiative Assistant Director Ryan Howzell at ryan.howzell@nyu.edu.