Sidney Awards
For more than fifty years, the Sidney Hillman Foundation has awarded the Hillman prizes, which are among the most prestigious honors in journalism. This year, the foundation inaugurated the Sidney, a monthly award for an outstanding piece of socially-conscious journalism. We are looking for investigative work that fosters social and economic justice. Make a nomination.
January, 2010
Anderson Cooper
CNN
Anderson Cooper has won the January Sidney Award for his network's unrivaled coverage of the devastation following the recent earthquake in Haiti. Together with his producer, Charlie Moore, and his cameraman, Neil Hallsworth, Cooper did a splendid job of chronicling the painful details of daily life in the aftermath of the quake.
Photo Credit: Julie Gottesman
Anderson Cooper and team accept the Sidney award in CNN's studio.
December, 2009
Tony Judt
The New York Review of Books
Tony Judt has won the December Sidney Award for What Is Living and What Is Dead In Social Democracy, his extraordinary piece in the December 17th issue of The New York Review of Books. Judt's essay, based on lectures delivered at New York University last October, chronicles the role of social democracy in 20th century political thought.
November, 2009
Dave Jamieson
Washington Post Magazine
Dave Jamieson has won the November Sidney Award for his Washington Post Magazine article “The Treatment of Kenny Farnsworth,” a compelling account of a homeless man in Washington, D.C. who, like millions of Americans, depends exclusively on hospital emergency rooms for medical care.
October, 2009
Katy Bolger
Pavement Pieces
The October Sidney Award was awarded to Katy Bolger for her piece about the environmental catastrophes produced by coal and uranium mining on a Navajo reservation in Northeast Arizona. Bolger's piece is part of the series, "The Forgotten Navajo: People In Need," which was published in the Pavement Pieces website of New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
September, 2009
Jennifer Gonnerman
New York Magazine
The September Sidney Award was awarded to Jennifer Gonnerman for “Last Home Standing,” her piece in the September 14 issue of New York magazine, about the struggle of Jacqueline Tamaklo, one of the millions of victims of predatory mortgage scandals in the country.
August, 2009
Ryan Gabrielson & Michelle Reese
The East Valley Tribune
At a time when most newspapers are undergoing painful downsizing which sharply limits their capacity for investigative reporting, the East Valley Tribune devoted six stories and more than 10,000 words to a detailed and devastating dissection of the multiple abuses associated with Arizona's Private School Tuition Tax Credits program. The stories by Ryan Gabrielson and Michelle Reese were based on the newspaper’s examination of thousands of pages of state and federal tax records and private school enrollment data from the past 12 years. Read more
July, 2009
Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
Matt Taibbi is the winner of the July Sidney Award for "The Great American Bubble Machine," a 9,966 word dissection of how Goldman Sachs has been manipulating markets to enrich itself since its founding in the 19th Century. Read more
June, 2009
Victoria Cruz
WNYC
The Hillman Foundation announces 17-year-old Victoria Cruz as the winner of The Sidney for her June 25, 2009 WNYC segment "Best Couple." In the radio piece, done for the station's Radio Rookies program, and broadcast on "Morning Edition and "All Things Considered, " Ms. Cruz reports on how she and her girlfriend became the first same-sex couple at their Bronx, NY high school to receive the "Best Couple" award in their yearbook.
Certificate designed by Edward Sorel
The Sidney is awarded monthly to a piece published in an American magazine, newspaper, on a news site, or a blog. Television and radio broadcasts by an American news outlet are also eligible, as are published photography series.
Deadlines are the last day of each month. The piece must have been published in the month preceding the deadline. In the case of magazines, please nominate according to the issue date on the publication, not when it first appeared.
Nominations are accepted for one's own work, or for someone else's.
The Foundation will announce a winner on the 15th of each month. Recipients will be awarded $500, a bottle of union-made wine, and a certificate designed especially for the Sidney by New Yorker cartoonist, Edward Sorel.
If you wish to nominate yourself or a piece by anyone else, please click here for our nomination form.If you have any further questions about the nomination process, please send your inquiry to ckaiser@hillmanfoundation.org