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IRE announces winners of the 2025 Philip Meyer Journalism Award

The annual Philip Meyer Journalism Award from Investigative Reporters and Editors recognizes the best use of social science research methods in journalism. This year, IRE honors five investigative projects from a pool of extraordinarily strong applicants.

Winning projects will be recognized on March 6 at the 2026 NICAR Conference in Indianapolis, during the Friday evening Philip Meyer Award Presentation.

The winners are:

Judges’ comments on winning investigations

"The judges were pleased to see this year the increase in collaborations with social scientists and scientists, whether those collaborations involved arduous quantitative analysis or expert testing of polluted water," said Sarah Cohen and Brant Houston, co-chairs of the 2025 Philip Meyer Journalism Award Committee. 

They also noted, "The judges also lauded the rise in the number of independent journalists doing the kind of careful, methodological work that Philip Meyer would have encouraged and praised. Furthermore, there was exemplary storytelling that emphasized the human impact of the findings revealed in rigorous - and often complex - data analysis."

First place

“Transit nightmare: Thousands of Baltimore kids can’t get to school on time”, The Baltimore Banner

By Greg Morton, Liz Bowie & Ryan Little

Judges’ comments: In a sophisticated and well-researched data-driven story, beat reporters at the Baltimore Banner documented a serious failure of local government: Students missing school after buses failed to show up or showed up late. Students in Baltimore can attend any school in the city, but the school system does not supply yellow bus service after elementary school. The lack of coordination meant students could spend hours a day traveling between home and school. The Banner tied this failure to another: nearly half of the system’s students were chronically absent. Working with academic advisors, the news site modeled more than 4,000 routes and gathered millions of real-time transit records and “concluded that even in the best of circumstances, it is nearly impossible to make it to school on time every day.”

We cite the Baltimore Banner for its careful use of social science methods to tackle an issue of prime importance for its readers.

 

Second place

“Life of a Mother”, ProPublica

By Sophie Chou, Lizzie Presser, Andrea Suozzo, and Kavitha Surana

Judges’ comments: ProPublica built on its acclaimed “Life of the Mother” series last year, setting out to quantify the impact of abortion bans on pregnant women’s lives after a near-total ban went into effect in Texas in 2022. Reporters acquired costly hospital data, studied and adapted established research methodology, and revealed three alarming trends: a rise in life-threatening infections for women hospitalized with second-trimester pregnancy loss, a surge in women nearly bleeding to death during first-trimester miscarriages, and an increase in hospital deaths of pregnant women. It was research no one else had done. At a time when the tether from accountability journalism to policy change has grown thin, this reporting had a remarkable impact: Republican lawmakers who were the original supporters of Texas’ ban acknowledged women were denied care because medical providers were unsure what the ban allowed, and amended the state’s Life of the Mother Act to clarify.

 

Third place

“Families Caught in Fallout of 'Crime Free' Housing Policies”, The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com

By Hannah Dreyfus and Max Griswold

Judges’ comments: In an investigation that demonstrated the strength of collaborations between journalists and social scientists, the Arizona Republic and the research nonprofit, RAND, worked together to expose the failure of “crime-free” housing policies intended to let landlords more easily evict tenants suspected of criminal behavior. Using quantitative analysis and varied statistical methods and an intense collection of documents and on-the-ground reporting, the series of stories showed the policies did not reduce crime, but instead increased and fast-tracked evictions based on landlords’ suspicions - not evidence- and impacted non-white renters and the poor disproportionately.

 

Honorable mention

“The Hidden Costs of AI”, Bloomberg News

By Leonardo Nicoletti, Josh Saul, Demetrios Pogkas, Michelle Ma, Andre Tartar, Dina Bass, and Naureen S. Malik

 

Judges’ comments: Bloomberg News’ The Hidden Costs of AI was a product of three definitive investigations in 2024-2025.

 

“AI Needs So Much Power, It’s Making Yours Worse” analyzed US data on a power-quality metric called “harmonic distortion” to uncover the first- ever link between data centers and distorted power capable of destroying electrical appliances and increasing the risk of fire in nearby homes.

 

“AI Is Draining Water From Areas That Need It Most” analyzed large-scale data on water risk to discover that most water-thirsty data centers around the world are planned or built in areas already experiencing high competition over water scarcity.

 

“AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring” was a first-of-its-kind collaboration that provided hard data evidence on the links between skyrocketing power prices and proximity to data centers in the US. The groundbreaking series comes at a time when AI’s widespread adoption is poised to drive more than $1 trillion in spending on larger, more resource-intensive data centers.

 

Special mention

“The Legacy of Luckey”, The Blade

By Alexa York

Judges’ comments: Alexa York didn't set out to do a data-driven investigation.  As a child in Luckey, Ohio, she heard of the Cold War site near their farm that processed materials for nuclear weapons. While interning on Capitol Hill, the recently graduated music major took the opportunity to begin researching the site. She found personal papers of some Cold War players and discovered that officials had routinely downplayed the danger posed by nuclear testing. She sought help from a veteran investigative reporter and pitched a story to the Toledo Blade. Once hired, an editor helped her obtain funding from the Pulitzer Center to finish the story. The Blade conducted water testing around the site and found high levels of radioactivity, contradicting official statements. The relentless pursuit of this story and careful methods resulted in a classic data-driven investigation that helped Blade readers understand the contamination faced in the region.

 

About the Philip Meyer Award

The Philip Meyer Award is named after the author of “Precision Journalism.” Meyer was a longtime journalist and educator who pioneered the use of empirical methods to improve news reporting. Read more about his legacy here.

 

Judges for the 2025 Philip Meyer Journalism Award are:

  • Sarah Cohen, Independent journalist, retired Knight Chair in Data Journalism at Arizona State University, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
  • Emily Corwin, Senior Editor of Investigations at American Public Media
  • Brant Houston, Knight Chair in Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • David McKie, Deputy Managing Editor at Canada’s National Observer

 

The Philip Meyer Journalism Award follows the rules of the IRE Awards to avoid conflicts of interest. Work that included any significant role by a Meyer Award contest judge may not be entered in the contest. This often represents a significant sacrifice on the part of the individual — and sometimes an entire newsroom. The IRE membership appreciates this dedication to the organization's values.

 

IRE works to foster excellence in investigative journalism, which is essential to a free society. Founded in 1975, IRE has more than 4,500 members worldwide. Headquartered at the Missouri School of Journalism, IRE provides training, resources and a community of support to investigative journalists; promotes high professional standards; and protects the rights of investigative journalists. The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting was founded by the Missouri School of Journalism in 1989 and, in 1994, became a collaboration between the school and IRE.

 

Contact:

  • Diana Fuentes, IRE Executive Director: diana@ire.org
  • Philip Meyer Journalism Award Committee: awards@ire.org

 

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