The Center for Journalism Ethics at UW-Madison seeks nominations for the Anthony Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics beginning on Nov. 10, 2025.
Now in its 17th year, the Shadid Award recognizes ethical decisions in reporting stories in any medium, including print, broadcast and digital, by journalists working for established news organizations or publishing independently. Work must have been published or aired in 2025. The award focuses on current journalism and does not include books, documentaries and other long-term projects.
The deadline for submissions is Jan. 15, 2026. Each news organization can submit up to two nominations.
The Shadid Award includes a $10,000 prize and travel expenses to accept the award and discuss the reporting at an awards ceremony held in Washington, DC on April 20, 2026.
The Shadid Award is different from other journalism prizes because it seeks to recognize the difficult, behind-the-scenes decisions reporters make in pursuing high-impact stories and in fulfilling their ethical obligations to sources, to people caught up in news events, and to the public at large.
“The prize recognizes the difficult ethical decisions journalists face when producing stories that necessarily affect the people and communities they report on, their readers, and even themselves,” said Kathryn McGarr, chair of the judging committee. “We are pleased to be able to honor the memory of Anthony Shadid by highlighting work that is made with such care for its consequences.”
Letters of nomination must include:
• The name and contact information of the nominators and their relationship to the story;
• Names and emails of the reporter or reporting team who produced the report;
• A brief description of the story and a link to it online. If you are submitting a series longer than two installments, please highlight the two that you want to get the closest consideration (judges will take into account the whole series);
• A description of conflicting values encountered in reporting the story
• Options considered to resolve the conflicts; and
• Final decisions and rationales behind them.
Nomination letters of three pages or less should be saved in pdf format and attached to an email sent to ethicsaward@journalism.wisc.edu.
A UW-Madison graduate, Anthony Shadid died in 2012 while crossing the Syrian border on a reporting assignment for the New York Times. He won two Pulitzer Prizes for his courageous and insightful foreign correspondence. Shadid sat on the ethics center’s advisory board and strongly supported its efforts to promote public interest journalism and to stimulate discussion about journalism ethics.
Shadid won the Pulitzer Prize for international Reporting in 2004 for his coverage of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the occupation that followed. He won the Pulitzer Prize again in 2010 for his coverage of Iraq as the United States began its withdrawal. In 2007, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of Lebanon and the war there with Israel. He has also received the Arthur Ross Award for Distinguished Reporting & Analysis onForeign Affairs (2009), the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ award for deadline writing (2004), the Overseas Press Club’s Hal Boyle Award for best newspaper or wire service reporting from abroad (2004) and the George Polk Award for foreign reporting (2003).
The five previous winners of the award include Previous winners of the award include:
2025: Hannah Furfaro, Lauren Frohne, Ivy Ceballo, The Seattle Times;
2024: Jon Schuppe, Mike Hixenbaugh, Rich Schapiro, NBC News;
2023: Mystyslav Chernov, Lori Hinnant, Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko, Associated Press;
2022: Jessica Contrera, Washington Post; and
2021: Margie Mason and Robin McDowell, Associated Press.
