Finalist: Ernesto Barbieri and Jess Ruliffson, contributors, The Boston Globe
For “True Stories From an ICU,” a beautiful, funny and frequently haunting depiction of the fragility of human life, with each frame perfectly paced over a seamless scroll.
Nominated Work
May 31, 2024
September 14, 2024
December 29, 2024
Biography
Ernesto Barbieri is a registered nurse in the Boston area whose writing has appeared in The Believer, Iowa Review, Midway Journal, Fourteen Hills, Berkeley Fiction Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of Hunter College’s MFA fiction program, he is at work on a novel and a graphic memoir.
Jess Ruliffson is an Eisner-nominated graphic journalist based in Boston. Her debut graphic novel, Invisible Wounds, was published by Fantagraphics Books in 2022. She teaches at Boston University and The Sequential Artists Workshop.
Winners
Prize Winner in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary in 2025:
Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post
For delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity – and a fearlessness that led to her departure from the news organization after 17 years.
Illustrated Reporting and Commentary
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary in 2025:
Iran Martinez, Steve Breen, Jamie Self and Giovanni Moujaes of inewsource.org, San Diego
For “Fentanyl: A Decade of Death,” which deftly weaves hard data and human stories with effective metaphors to create a powerful visual narrative for a national audience and the local San Diego readership.
The Jury
The Jury
John Diaz(Chair)
Former Editorial Page Editor, San Francisco Chronicle
Susie Cagle
Enterprise Editor, The San Francisco Standard
Roz Chast
Cartoonist, The New Yorker
Alberto Cairo
Associate Professor/Knight Chair in Visual Journalism, School of Communications, University of Miami
Mariel Garza
Former Editorials Editor, Los Angeles Times
Winners in Illustrated Reporting and Commentary
Medar de la Cruz, contributor, The New Yorker
For his visually-driven story set inside Rikers Island jail using bold black-and-white images that humanize the prisoners and staff through their hunger for books.
Mona Chalabi, contributor, The New York Times
For striking illustrations that combine statistical reporting with keen analysis to help readers understand the immense wealth and economic power of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Fahmida Azim, Anthony Del Col, Josh Adams and Walt Hickey of Insider, New York, N.Y.
For using graphic reportage and the comics medium to tell a powerful yet intimate story of the Chinese oppression of the Uyghurs, making the issue accessible to a wider public.
2025 Prize Winners
Staff of The Wall Street Journal
For chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Alissa Zhu, Nick Thieme and Jessica Gallagher of The Baltimore Banner and The New York Times
For a compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older Black men, creating a sophisticated statistical model that The Banner shared with other newsrooms.
Mosab Abu Toha, contributor, The New Yorker
For essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel.
Alexandra Lange, contributing writer, Bloomberg CityLab
For graceful and genre-expanding writing about public spaces for families, deftly using interviews, observations and analysis to consider the architectural components that allow children and communities to thrive.