The 2025 duPont-Columbia Awards Finalists

Columbia Journalism School announced the 30 Finalists of the 2025 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards today, honoring outstanding public service in audio and video reporting. 

PBS leads the group of Finalists with honors for four documentary programs; two from FRONTLINE, one American Experience and one American Masters

HBO is a Finalist for two programs, including a documentary series about a racial reckoning in Boston. Netflix is a finalist for two documentaries about gender based violence. Reveal is also a Finalist for two podcasts, one about police misconduct.

Coverage of the war in Gaza from NPR, This American Life and The New York Times are Finalists. 

First-time Finalists for the duPont Award include Telemundo for a climate change project carried across its local stations; Scripps News for two investigative stories, one about Flint, MI water and a second on Maine gun laws; The Boston Globe for a podcast series about a racially charged murder case that gained national attention, and The Outlaw Ocean Project for an investigation into China’s illegal fishing practices.

Nine of the Finalists honored local newsrooms, a critical part of the awards’ mission, on topics that range from domestic violence, to official corruption and the rise of extremism in the U.S.

The 2025 duPont-Columbia Winners will be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday, January 22, 2025 at Columbia’s Low Library.


40 Acres and a Lie

Reveal, The Center for Public Integrity, Mother Jones & PRX

This three-part audio investigation analyzed almost two million historical records to show how an often-misunderstood government program gave more than 1,200 formerly enslaved people land titles, only to take the land back, fueling a wealth gap that remains today.

A Failure to Protect: A Domestic Violence Investigation

WBBM-TV, Chicago

An ongoing local investigative series took a heart-wrenching look at the scourge of domestic violence, exposing how despite victims’ best efforts to report their assailants, the system still fails and ultimately relies on women to defend themselves.

A Revolution on Canvas

HBO | Max & Partner Pictures

Artist Nicky Nodjoumi’s daughter tells his larger-than-life story in a documentary that takes viewers from the drama of the Iranian revolution to the trauma it inflicted on a family of artists, all illustrated by Nodjoumi's gorgeous and provocative work.

Battleground Texas

VICE News

When the Texas state legislature voted on 48 anti-trans bills that would deny them gender affirming healthcare, filmmakers followed four trans kids and their families who went to Austin to try to stop them.

Birthing A Nation: The Resistance of Mary Gaffney

MTV Documentary Films, Take Flight Films & Firelight Films

Using testimony from the WPA’s oral histories, this short documentary explored the practice of forced reproduction in the antebellum South and spotlighted the agency of Mary Gaffney, an enslaved woman who took control of her body and fertility.

China: The Superpower of Seafood

The Outlaw Ocean Project

Using ground-breaking techniques, a team of journalists investigated China’s illegal fishing practices, human rights abuses and the use of state-sponsored forced labor, connecting the dots that lead from the country’s massive fishing industry to the food served on tables around the world.

Democracy on Trial

FRONTLINE  (PBS)

Interweaving testimony and video from the January 6 committee hearing with chilling archive and insightful interviews, FRONTLINE delivers a searing and comprehensive report on the roots of the criminal cases against Donald Trump stemming from his 2020 election loss.   

Drained

KPRC-TV, Houston & Amy Davis

Houston's crumbling municipal water infrastructure led a dogged reporting team on a monthslong gumshoe journey through neighborhoods, government offices, worksites, and official records to expose, and then take down a scheme of high-level corruption.

Flint: City in Contempt

Scripps News

Ten years after the toxic water contamination scandal, reporters found hundreds of Flint homes still connected to dangerous lead pipes, despite $100 million in cleanup costs, and the city still can't finish the job.

Hate Comes to Main Street

WTVF-TV, NewsChannel 5 Nashville & Phil Williams

NewsChannel 5’s Chief Investigative Reporter Phil Williams unmasked the hate, political extremism and unhinged conspiracy theories infecting political life in Tennessee, and then became a target himself.

Maine Shooting: Missed Warnings

Scripps News

This investigation revealed how poor officer training in red flag laws - designed to prevent armed individuals from harming others - failed, despite numerous threats, warnings, and missed opportunities, with tragic consequences for 18 innocent civilians.

Murder in Boston

HBO | Max, Little Room Films & The Boston Globe (Docuseries)

The Boston Globe & HBO (Podcast)

A documentary series and a podcast examine how a high profile Boston murder led to a racist rush to judgment that tore the city apart, before the truth was finally revealed.

Nazi Town, USA

GBH American Experience | PBS & Pangloss Films

This deeply researched documentary offered a new and frightening view inside America's home-grown fascist movement in the 1930s, and especially the nationwide network of youth summer camps that were intended to plant Nazi ideology firmly in the American mainstream.

Our Planet: Latinos and Climate Change

Telemundo Station Group

Telemundo’s reporters and meteorologists traveled across Puerto Rico. Mexico, the US mainland and Alaska to find out from Latinos on the frontlines of climate change how it directly impacts the Latino community, and highlight the actions audiences should take now.

‘Our Refinery Is On Fire’: Two Brothers and a Deadly Explosion

The Wall Street Journal & Spotify

This gripping audio investigation scrutinized an explosion at a refinery, the warnings that were ignored, woven through the lives and last minutes of two brothers who were killed.

Porcelain War

Songbird Studios & Imaginary Lane

Using exquisite animation, combat drones, and wry first person narrative, this evocative documentary is told by and about Ukrainian civilians called upon to defend their country who still cling to the beauty of their culture, art and nature.

Putin vs. the Press

FRONTLINE (PBS) & Channel 4

With unprecedented access, FRONTLINE producers followed an embattled Russian editor who opted to stay in Moscow and fight to preserve his newspaper as his reporters were murdered, exiled, and targeted by the state.

Supplying a High

WVUE FOX 8 New Orleans & Rob Krieger

When a Louisiana resident was paralyzed after incessant nitrous oxide use, WVUE-TV investigated and found the drug, intended for food preparation, was being widely marketed as a drug high.

The Incomparable Mr. Buckley

THIRTEEN American Masters | PBS & ARK Media

A riveting portrait of William F. Buckley, this documentary followed the personal and political journey of the man who created, then led the modern conservative movement as it grew into a powerful force that has transformed American politics.

The Space Race

National Geographic Documentary Films, The Kennedy/Marshall Company, Alegria Films & Cortés Filmworks

This documentary recounted the compelling story of the first NASA Black astronauts who struggled to overcome racism to be part of the space program and redefine who has “The Right Stuff.” 

The War in Gaza Coverage

NPR

NPR’s coverage of the war in Gaza exhibited ingenuity and sensitivity at great risk, getting behind the politics to show how the conflict has affected the men, women and children on all sides.

The Wild West of Education

ABC10 KXTV, Sacramento & Andie Judson

Reporter Andie Judson showed viewers how one man created a charter school empire filled with corruption and intimidation, and how the State of California fed the school hundreds of millions of dollars with almost no oversight. 

The Wrong Man

KFOR, Oklahoma City & Ali Meyer

An innocent man was finally exonerated after more than 48 years, due in large part to the tenacity of one reporter who documented this injustice for two decades. 

To Kill a Tiger

Netflix & Notice Pictures Inc.

This compelling documentary tells the story of a humble farmer in India who embarked on a remarkable pursuit of justice after his teen daughter was gang raped, defying deep intolerance in their village.

Una Vida Nueva

KUSA-TV, Denver & Angeline McCall

As Denver struggled to respond to the sudden and massive influx of Venezuelan immigrants, in this documentary KUSA’s team followed families as they navigated an ever changing bureaucracy in search of stability, safety and opportunity for their children.

Visual Evidence Shows Israel Dropped 2,000-Pound Bombs Where It Ordered Gaza’s Civilians to Move for Safety

The New York Times

This painstaking New York Times forensic investigation confirmed Israel's use of 2000-pound bombs in areas of South Gaza where civilians were told to seek shelter, cutting to the core of an ongoing human tragedy.

We Don’t Talk About Leonard

ProPublica & On The Media | WNYC Studios

In this podcast series, ProPublica and On the Media documented the rise of Leonard Leo from a suit-and-tie-wearing fourth grader to the most influential conservative who single-handedly transformed the American judiciary from top to bottom.

We Regret to Inform You

Reveal, The Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley & PRX

This podcast exposed how police officers are trained to delay death notifications to extract potentially damaging information from grieving families - and thereby reduce civil suit payouts - before informing them that their loved one has been killed by police.     

You Are Not Alone: Fighting the Wolfpack

Netflix & Lucernam Films

Through key testimonies, this gripping documentary deconstructs a gang rape that took place during the 2016 San Fermín festival and led to Spain’s #MeToo movement.

Yousef Coverage

This American Life

Through a series of expansive and gut-wrenching phone conversations with producer Chana Joffe Walt, listeners learned of the struggles of Yousef Hamash to keep his family safe from Israeli bombs, and experienced first-hand how life has turned upside down for people in Gaza.