EWA Announces the 2023 Top 3 Prize Winners

May 31, 2024 (WASHINGTON, DC)—The Education Writers Association is pleased to present the recipients of the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting, the Ronald Moskowitz Prize for Outstanding Beat Reporting and the EGF Accelerator’s Eddie Prize.

Recipients were announced today during EWA’s 77th National Seminar in Las Vegas. Click the links below to read the award-winning work and to view the judges’ comments.

The EGF Accelerator’s Eddie Prize was awarded to Deborah Jian Lee for “Persecution in the Name of the Lord,” which was produced by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and appeared in Esquire magazine. The award comes with an honorarium of $7,500. This is the final year for the Eddie Prize.

The Ronald Moskowitz Prize for Outstanding Beat Reporting was awarded to Talia Richman of The Dallas Morning News. Her reporting exposed the unfair punishment of a Black middle schooler who reported a potential shooting risk, the Texas governor’s effort to impose education savings accounts, and the explosion of uncertified teachers across the state. 

The award comes with an honorarium of $2,500. Only beat reporting category winners are eligible to receive the Moskowitz Prize.

The Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting was awarded to Brandi Kellam, Louis Hansen and Gabriel Sandoval for their collaboration at the Virginia Center for Investigative Reporting at WHRO and ProPublica. “Uprooted” exposed how a university destroyed a Black, middle-class neighborhood. The award comes with an honorarium of $10,000. 

The grand prize winner was selected from among 14 category winners in the 2023 National Awards for Education Reporting. The category winners were announced on Thursday.