2023 Zenger Prize
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WATCH: This 13-minute video shows the 2025 Zenger Prize winners discussing their prizewinning stories, what keeps them persisting in an embattled industry, and how Zenger House is making an impact.
WINNERS
Miriam Jordan
The New York Times, March 16, 2024
Miriam Jordan showed how Gil Howard, an 82-year-old retired professor in Modesto, California, gave 400 Afghan women not just driving skills but a sense of independence. His free service became a lifeline for refugees and asylum seekers striving to manage grocery shopping, visits to doctors, and other tasks.
Zak Keefer
The Athletic, July 24, 2024
Zak Keefer detailed how Grant Stuard hid his parents’ trauma and became the caretaker for his siblings, sometimes at age 11 driving them to school. Stuard eventually professed faith in Christ, transformed his own life, became an NFL linebacker, and helped his family recover and his mother to become sober.
McKay Coppins
The Atlantic, July 29, 2024
McKay Coppins wrote about prayers before Donald Trump’s speeches at campaign rallies. He showed how pastors portrayed Trump as a new David, Solomon, or Esther, promised he would be God's "agent of wrath," and looked forward to "retribution." Those prayers forecast accurately the Trump administration’s 2025 direction.
Caitlin Dickerson
The Atlantic, August 6, 2024
Caitlin Dickerson narrated her walk through the Darien Gap jungle in Panama, along with thousands of would-be US immigrants: “Looking down at a thrashing river, I held on to ropes that made it safer—slightly—to creep across sheer rock faces behind parents with crying babies strapped to their chests.”
Liz Essley Whyte
The Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2024
Liz Essley Whyte informed readers how medical advances have increased survival rates for babies born at 22 weeks gestation: At some hospitals, two-thirds make it, but many hospitals lack the capability or choose not to resuscitate due to high costs, disability risks, and a sense that treatment may be futile.
Jack Herrera
Texas Monthly, November 20, 2024
Jack Herrera delineated how U.S.-Mexico border issues emerge from economic dependencies and political motivations, not just security concerns. American citizens have benefited from labor provided by undocumented immigrants, and some have offered humanitarian aid and legal pathways without tackling root economic causes.
Rick Jervis
USA Today
Chris Kenning
USA Today
Johnny Casey
The News-Record & Sentinel (Madison County, NC)
Rick Jervis, Chris Kenning, and Johnny Casey reported how Hurricane Helene led to catastrophic flooding, landslides, and numerous rescues in western North Carolina. Local firefighters and volunteers braved rising waters that hurled tree trunks, refrigerators, dumpsters, and other debris. They saved lives, but some succumbed.
Harvest Prude
Christianity Today, September 2024
Harvest Prude profiled officials and volunteer poll watchers who faced criticism, threats, and even demonization for their service in elections that became disputed. She revealed their attitudes, determination, and beliefs: “Christine Johnson is the type of American who kisses her ballot and thanks God whenever she votes.”
Amitabh Parashar
BBC, September 10, 2024
Amitabh Parashar revealed how a social worker helped to change the perspective of women in India. Some rescued and arranging adoptions for baby girls instead of killing them. Monica, One of these saved girls, Monica, decades later met the midwife who helped to rescue her.
Jason DeParle
The New York Times, November 24, 2024
Jason DeParle described vividly and positively the Lamb Center in Fairfax, Virginia, which has been a sanctuary for the homeless for more than three decades. Heshowed how the Center offers free breakfast and lunch, showers, and laundry, but “the center treats Bible study as equally vital, if not more so.”
Gabriele Steinhauser
Wall Street Journal
Gabriele Steinhauser and Mohamed Zakaria described how, amid intense conflict in Sudan, doctors, aid workers, and volunteers initiated a rescue operation for 370 children in an orphanage. Power cuts and explosions proved weaker than a doctor’s plea for help, as some fighters formed a human chain to pass along diapers.
Mo Zakaria
Wall Street Journal
Marshall Allen
ProPublica and others
Allen's award is not for a particular article but for years of investigating for ProPublica how healthcare companies over-billed consumers. His work culminated in the 2021 book Never Pay the First Bill: And Other Ways to Fight the Health Care System.
Alen last year died of a heart attack at age 52. His wife Sonja told ProPublica, “He just came to life when he started to write. I would say the number 1 thing that motivated his work was his belief in the Bible, of standing up for what's right.”
LISTEN: Caitlin Dickerson talks with Marvin Olasky, Zenger House board chairman, about her prize winning piece on Christianity Today's podcast, The Bulletin (click image below to visit show page).
Zenger Prizes are the successor to the Amy Writing Awards administered by the Amy Foundation for 31 years through 2015. Prizes honor journalists whose work displayed solid reporting and storytelling.
Zenger Prize Winners' Recent Work
December 15, 2024/ "The Alienation of Jaime Cachua."
Once again, Saslow brings humanity to a complex topic, telling the story of an undocumented immigrant in Rome, Ga., to show the real-world toll of Trump's immigration policies.
April 8, 2024/ "Dr. Bob, 75, Knows Aging’s Toll. He Wonders if Biden and Trump Do."
Eli Saslow expertly profiles small-town physician Bob Ross, who ponders his own cognitive fitness as he enters advanced age, while also raising questions about whether the similarly aged presidential candidates are "up to the task."
August 24, 2023/ "Don’t Waste Your Life: How One Family Stopped Being Trashy Christians"
For Christianity Today, Emily Belz shares how one Tennessee family aims to manage their impact on the environment by living a "zero waste" life.
August 15, 2023/ "All About Jesus: Tim Keller’s Memorial Service"
Sarah Zylstra reports on the service honoring the life of famed Presbyterian minister Tim Keller, who died this year of pancreatic cancer. Read more at The Gospel Coalition, the publication Keller co-founded.
August 12, 2023/ "What the New Wave of Prison Art Tells Us About Incarceration Today"
Maurice Chammah's latest for The Marshall Project: "From LEGO sculptures to psychedelic quilts, several new exhibits convey the prison experience in ways that transcend words alone."
July 6, 2023/ "Transformation of a Transgender Teen"
Writing for The Gospel Coalition, Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra reports on one family's experience with a child who claimed to be transgender.
July 5, 2023/ "The Young Christian Who Took Johnson & Johnson to Court"
Emily Belz for Christianity Today profiles Hanna Wilt, who "testified to God’s presence in a terminal diagnosis while pursuing a case against [Johnson & Johnson] over its baby powder."
June 25, 2023/ "He Tried to Save a Friend. They Charged Him With Murder."
In The New York Times, Eli Saslow offers a nuanced, narrative look at the complicated work of prosecuting drug deaths.
June 10, 2023/ "A Battle Over First Amendment Rights in Prisons"
Maurice Chammah co-writes an article for The Marshall Project about New York's attempts to limit prisoners' writings and artistic works.
June 2, 2023/ "Inside the Meltdown at CNN"
For a profile in The Atlantic, Tim Alberta gained remarkable access to Chris Licht in what would become his final days as head of CNN.
April 21, 2023/ "The deputy and the disappeared"
In a long-form article for CNN, Thomas Lake explores a deputy sheriff's apparent connection to two missing men of color.
April 17, 2023/ "Seeking Absolution: Inside The Jesus Movement That Shaped My Childhood"
Yahoo! News Chief National Correspondent Jon Ward, on Religion Unplugged, shares an excerpt from his latest book, “Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation.”
March 24, 2023/ "Donald Trump Is on the Wrong Side of the Religious Right"
The Atlantic's Tim Alberta claims, "Evangelical leaders are abandoning the former president, and his Republican rivals are scrambling to win their support."
March 13, 2023/ "Mike Pence seems to know where he's going"
In a lengthy interview for Yahoo! News, Jon Ward talks to former Vice President—and prospective 2024 presidential candidate—Mike Pence.
February 16, 2023/ "Radical beliefs in 'spiritual warfare' played a major role in Jan. 6, an expert argues"
Jon Ward for Yahoo! News: "Religious scholar Matthew D. Taylor says the rhetoric of Christian nationalist pastors can tip over into actual violence."
February 15, 2023/ "Requiem for the Spartans"
Michigan State graduate Tim Alberta reflects on how the February 13th shooting at his alma mater has already changed the campus.
February 13, 2023/ "Ministers in Ukraine Are ‘Ready to Meet God at Any Moment’"
After a recent reporting trip to the war-torn country, Sophia Lee reports that "pastors and church leaders who stayed behind serve as if every day might be their last."
February 11, 2023/ "America Has Gone Too Far in Legalizing Vice"
In his debut for The Atlantic, Matthew Loftus considers how lawmakers restrict or permit the entrenchment of vice.
January 3, 2023/ "A Poet for 'Bruised Evangelicals'"
Kara Bettis offers another engaging profile in Christianity Today, this time of "Anglican priest, poet, academic, and singer-songwriter" Malcolm Guite.
October - December 2022/ The James Brown Podcast
For CNN, Thomas Lake explores the mysterious circumstances around the death of "The Godfather of Soul."