Finalist: Brian Lyman of the Alabama Reflector
For brave, clear and pointed columns that challenge ever-more-repressive state policies flouting democratic norms and targeting vulnerable populations, written with the command and authority of a veteran political observer.
Nominated Work
April 24, 2023
July 17, 2023
September 18, 2023
October 2, 2023
September 25, 2023
May 8, 2023
Biography
Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector, a nonprofit news outlet affiliated with States Newsroom. He has covered Alabama government since 2006. He has worked at the Montgomery Advertiser; the Press-Register and The Anniston Star, and reported on many issues, from the death penalty to climate change to Alabama history. Lyman has won awards from the Associated Press and the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. He lives in Auburn with his wife Julie and their three children.
Winners
Prize Winner in Commentary in 2024:
Vladimir Kara-Murza, contributor, The Washington Post
For passionate columns written under great personal risk from his prison cell, warning of the consequences of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and insisting on a democratic future for his country.
Commentary
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Commentary in 2024:
Jay Caspian Kang of The New Yorker
For original columns that force us to reexamine popular narratives and reframe such critical topics as affirmative action, racial politics and the portrayal of gun violence.
The Jury
The Jury
Susan B. Glasser(Chair)
Staff Writer, The New Yorker
Amy Driscoll*
Opinion Editor, Miami Herald
Nicholas Goldberg
Former Editorial Page Editor, Los Angeles Times
Cynthia R. Greenlee
Deputy Editor, Special Projects, The Guardian US
Helen Jung
Opinion Editor, The Oregonian/OregonLive
Zeba Khan
Deputy Editorial Page Editor, San Francisco Chronicle
David Plazas
Opinion and Engagement Director, The Tennessean
Winners in Commentary
Kyle Whitmire of AL.com, Birmingham
For measured and persuasive columns that document how Alabama's Confederate heritage still colors the present with racism and exclusion, told through tours of its first capital, its mansions and monuments–and through the history that has been omitted.
Melinda Henneberger of The Kansas City Star
For persuasive columns demanding justice for alleged victims of a retired police detective accused of being a sexual predator.
Michael Paul Williams of the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch
For penetrating and historically insightful columns that guided Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy, through the painful and complicated process of dismantling the city's monuments to white supremacy.
Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times
For a sweeping, provocative and personal essay for the ground-breaking 1619 Project, which seeks to place the enslavement of Africans at the center of America’s story, prompting public conversation about the nation’s founding and evolution.
2024 Prize Winners
Sarah Stillman of The New Yorker
For a searing indictment of our legal system’s reliance on the felony murder charge and its disparate consequences, often devastating for communities of color.
Staff of Reuters
For an eye-opening series of accountability stories focused on Elon Musk’s automobile and aerospace businesses, stories that displayed remarkable breadth and depth and provoked official probes of his companies’ practices in Europe and the United States.
Hannah Dreier of The New York Times
For a deeply reported series of stories revealing the stunning reach of migrant child labor across the United States—and the corporate and governmental failures that perpetuate it.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, contributor, The Washington Post
For passionate columns written under great personal risk from his prison cell, warning of the consequences of dissent in Vladimir Putin’s Russia and insisting on a democratic future for his country.