Announcing the 2024 ASJA Article and Content Awards
Writing can feel like an act of faith. We brainstorm ideas, comb the latest research, and find and interview the most knowledgeable sources. We write first drafts, edit, edit some more, file our stories, and send them out into the world.
Good days may bring a note of praise from a longtime editor or a new client, or – my favorite – a note from a reader letting us know a story helped or inspired them. Those are the days that keep many of us going. Other days bring silence. Or criticism. Or rejection.
Then there are days like today – the day we announce the 2024 ASJA award-winning articles and content. See the full list of article and content winners here.
With the announcement of this year’s award winners, ASJA continues its long tradition of recognizing outstanding nonfiction articles, essays, and content marketing in a variety of categories. Having your work recognized by your peers can feel particularly meaningful. As one winner told me: “I needed this today.”
Get Inspired by 2024 ASJA Article and Content Awards
As chair of the 2024 ASJA Awards Committee, it’s my pleasure to share this year’s article and content winners with you. Seventy volunteer judges spent the last few weeks reading and discussing more than 350 total entries and selecting winners – no easy task! We hope you’ll take some time to read the entries and congratulate your colleagues on a job well done. I know I’ve loved reading these entries and I think you will too!
Here are a couple of examples of the great work our judges noted:
Kim Kelly, a Philadelphia writer and self-described “working class labor journalist and troublemaker” won the Arlenes: Articles That Make a Difference award for “The Young Miners Dying of An Old Man’s Disease” in In These Times.
The judges said Kelly’s article “deftly combines data with the personal stories of American miners, regulators and industry experts to highlight the history and magnitude of black lung, a pressing problem misunderstood as ‘an old man’s disease.’ Her writing is clear, compelling and approachable.” Kelly’s ] editor noted in a letter detailing the impact of her work, “It’s a heartbreaking report on a dying industry that is taking its workers with it.”
The letter also noted that after the article was published, Kelly was invited to brief staffers with the offices of Sens. Bernie Sanders, John Fetterman and Joe Manchin, Reps. Ro Khanna and Summer Lee, and the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Following her exposé, the Mine Safety and Health Administration announced a new federal safety rule requiring coal companies to monitor silica dust levels in miners’ work environments and take corrective action to reduce dust exposure.
ASJA member Bobbi Dempsey won in the first-person essay award, for “A Knock on the Door,” in the New York Times. Dempsey regularly writes about poverty, income inequality, and issues affecting the poor and working class, along with other topics.
The judges called Dempsey’s essay about her childhood experience of witnessing sheriff’s deputies take inventory of her dilapidated house and its meager possessions “heartbreaking.”
The judges also said: “From the first instant, the reader is dropped right into the opening scene and can feel the fear and sadness and vulnerability of the narrator as if we were there – even though most of us haven’t experienced such a thing. It’s truly the sign of great writing: the ability to take something so personal and unique and make it universal. Another sign? Reading it three or four times and still getting weepy at the end, for the writer and what she endured and for the great writing that came out of it.”
Book Awards Announcement
ASJA will announce winners of 2024 book awards in September. If you don’t subscribe to the ASJA Weekly newsletter, sign up today to make sure you see winners when they’re announced. Subscribe here.
I also want to take a moment to thank every writer who entered their work in this year’s competition. Your support of this program helps support ASJA as an organization and we thank you!
I’d also like to thank the Awards committee: Stephanie Bouchard, Darcy Lewis, Maureen Salamon, and Beth Treffeisen.
Dara Chadwick is a Warwick, Rhode Island, writer and communications consultant with expertise in content creation, branding, and messaging for healthcare, government, and nonprofit clients. In addition to chairing the ASJA Awards committee, she serves as an at-large member of the organization’s board.