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# The Online Journalism Awards and why non-profit news is awesome
- URL: https://werd.io/the-online-journalism-awards-and-why-non-profit-news-is-awesome/
- Published: 2023-08-28T21:26:53.000Z
- Updated: 2023-08-28T21:26:53.000Z
- Author: Ben Werdmuller
- Tags: #Import 2025-06-13 09:21

I was pleased to attend the [Online Journalism Awards](https://awards.journalists.org/winners/2023/) on Saturday night. Some winning highlights included:

[The 19th](https://19thnews.org) won [a Breaking News award for its coverage of the Dobbs decision](https://awards.journalists.org/entries/unpacking-the-impact-of-dobbs/), including some really great data journalism. I’m proud of, and very happy for, my friends there. By the way, you should subscribe to data visuals reporter Jasmine Mithani’s great newsletter, [data + feelings](https://jazzmyth.substack.com/).

[ProPublica](https://propublica.org) won a few awards for its journalism, including on [the proliferation of junk science in the justice system](https://awards.journalists.org/entries/words-of-conviction-tracing-a-junk-science-through-the-justice-system/) and [on how viruses transmit from animals to people](https://awards.journalists.org/entries/roots-of-an-outbreak/).

[The Marshall Project](https://www.themarshallproject.org/) won [two awards for its work covering the American criminal justice system](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/08/28/the-marshall-project-wins-two-online-journalism-awards). Stories included [a two-year investigation into abuses by correctional officers in New York State](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/05/19/new-york-prison-corrections-officer-abuse-prisoners) and [a three-year story about mitigation specialists who help death penalty defendants by documenting their childhood traumas](https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/03/02/death-penalty-mitigation-specialists-rare-look).

[The Markup won an Excellence in Technology Reporting award](https://themarkup.org/inside-the-markup/2023/08/28/the-markup-wins-ona-award-in-technology-reporting) for its [reporting on broadband pricing across the US](https://themarkup.org/still-loading/2022/10/19/dollars-to-megabits-you-may-be-paying-400-times-as-much-as-your-neighbor-for-internet-service). I loved this reporting and directly used it to help a family member get a better broadband deal.

[Every one of these finalists and winners](https://awards.journalists.org/winners/2023/) is worth checking out. This is why I’m finding working in product and technology for non-profit news to be so rewarding: you get to support journalists who are genuinely making the world a better, more democratic place by shedding light on stories we need to know about.

News media in the US gets a lot of flak, and some of it is deserved. But the non-profit news industry in particular is doing incredible work, sometimes reporting stories for years on end, and putting every story out there for the public to read without a paywall in sight. These non-profit organizations deserve our personal and institutional support. They make our democracy better.