Multimedia Journalist of the Year
Dalton Bennett, The Washington Post
Portfolio
News Story
First - The Washington Post: "Cory makes her mad. Beto makes her swoon. Kamala makes her wonder. Who should she pick?"
Second - The Washington Post: "Crews search for the dead as Dorian's toll grows in the Bahamas"
Third - The Washington Post: "’He was a great friend’: Students in El Paso grieve for their fallen classmate"
Issue Reporting
First - McClatchy: "The wait at Matamoros"
Second - The Washington Post: "On the front lines of the fentanyl epidemic, one jail struggles to treat inmates"
Third - The Washington Post: "‘When will the Hatred stop?’: Family deals with loss after Dayton shooting"
Feature Story
First - BBC: "‘After Years of Searching, I found my Sister Next Door’"
Second - McClatchy: "Stricken"
Third - The Washington Post: "Washington is full of Waste. C-SPAN lets us wallow in it."
Award of Excellence - The Washington Post: "George Takei doesn't want us to forget the last time the U.S. put people in detention camps"
Explainer
First - NPR: "Jazz Night In America: Ella Fitzgerald"
Second - The Washington Post: "How video games became an entertainment juggernaut"
Third - CNN: "How a whistleblower complaint led to Trump's impeachment"
Award of Excellence - The Washington Post: "Childhood trauma is a public health threat. Kids deserve better."
Documentary or Series
First - McClatchy: "Perversion of Justice: How the law, the press and his victims finally caught up with Jeffrey Epstein"
Second - The Washington Post: "How a back injury turned a doting father into a fentanyl kingpin"
Third - The Washington Post: "Inside the opioid industry’s marketing machine"
Award of Excellence - NPR: "Senior Spring"
Best Multimedia Package
First - NPR: "Losing The Eternal Blue Sky"
Second - USA Today: "1619: The Long Road Home"
Third - The Washington Post: "Iran’s hostage factory"
Award of Excellence - NPR: "Plastics: What To Recycle, What Remains Trash And Why"
Award of Excellence - The Washington Post: "‘We was addicted to their pill, but they was addicted to the money’"
Award of Excellence - The Washington Post: "‘We just want to Know how to get out of Here.’"
2020 Digital Storytelling Contest Judges
Haimy Assefa
Haimy Assefa is an Emmy-nominated video journalist and documentary filmmaker. She produces, shoots, and edits cinematic stories in the U.S. and abroad. Haimy has been an integral part of digital video start-ups at places like CNN’s Great Big Story and NBC News’ Left Field.
Jamie Coughlin
Jamie Coughlin is a journalist and a film producer. She is an Emmy nominee, the recipient of a White House News Photographers Award for Best Documentary and is an IFP Documentary Lab Fellow and a RIAS fellow. TransMilitary, which Coughlin produced and wrote, premiered at SXSW 2018, where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary and received critical acclaim, including a GLAAD Media Award. Coughlin was named to the 10 Filmmakers to Watch list by The Independent. Her work has been supported by the International Documentary Association, Catapult Film Fund, Miller Packan Film Fund, GLAAD Media Institute, and Frameline Completion Fund. Coughlin and her partner Gabriel Silverman left their newsroom jobs in 2015 to start their production company, SideXSide Studios, based in Takoma Park, MD. Previously, Coughlin was the supervising producer for USA Today.
Francesca Trianni
Francesca Trianni is an Emmy-nominated senior producer at TIME, where she has worked since 2013. She has contributed to many of TIME’s most important stories, including features for Person of the Year and Time 100, and her work has been recognized with a World Press Photo award, Pictures of the Year International, and the National Murrow Awards. Francesca’s debut feature documentary, Paradise Without People, premiered in 2019. In 2018, Francesca produced, filmed and reported Finding Home: a year-long multimedia project on the Syrian refugee crisis told through the lives of three babies: Rahaf, Heln, and Faraj. Finding Home won the top prize at the 2018 World Press Photo contest for Innovative Storytelling, an ASME and an SPD award, among others. A native Italian speaker, Francesca graduated with honors from the Columbia Journalism School in New York.