Journalism Institute honors The Atlantic’s Ed Yong pandemic coverage with investigative journalism award
Ed Yong, the staff writer at The Atlantic who has been covering the coronavirus and its impact, will receive the National Press Club Journalism Institute’s 2020 Neil and Susan Sheehan Award for Investigative Journalism.
Yong’s in-depth analytical writing has explained, week after week, everything from the mask debate to long-haulers to how the coronavirus has seeped into America’s fault lines, and why the United States has been hit more severely than most other countries, with one-quarter of the world’s confirmed COVID‑19 cases and deaths, but just 4 percent of the global population.
He has done this through 5,000-word features, cover stories, interviews, Twitter updates, even advice to young journalists.
“Yong’s work has brought rich, real-time insights to policy makers and the public, and he’s made The Atlantic a must-read,” said Angela Greiling Keane, president of the Journalism Institute and editorial director for states and Canada at Politico.
In March, The Atlantic announced an unprecedented surge in readers and subscribers, a trend which continued into the summer and fall.
Yong is a science journalist and has spent most of 2020 focused on COVID-19. He has won several awards, including the Victor Cohn Prize for medical science reporting, the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award for biomedical reporting, the Byron H. Waksman Award for Excellence in the Public Communication of Life Sciences, and the National Academies Keck Science Communication Award.
I Contain Multitudes, his first book, became a New York Times bestseller and a clue on "Jeopardy." Yong has a Chatham Island black robin named after him.
The annual Sheehan award recognizes work that best reflects the Sheehans' extraordinary commitment to the principle that a vibrant democracy depends on an informed citizenry and a free press. The award promotes the practice of investigative journalism exemplifying compassion, courage and integrity.
The Institute plans to confer the 2020 Sheehan award at its virtual Fourth Estate Gala on Nov. 18. The Institute also plans to present CBS News President Susan Zirinsky with the National Press Club's Fourth Estate Award, the Club's highest honor.
The evening also expects to feature the recipients of John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, Maria Ressa and the Rappler team, who have been the target of repeated efforts by the government of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to silence them; and Linda Tirado, the author and freelance photographer who lost most of the sight in her left eye when a police officer's foam bullet hit her while she was taking pictures of a street protest in Minneapolis on May 30.
The dinner is a fundraiser for the Journalism Institute, the nonprofit affiliate of the Club. Financial support for the Sheehan Award is provided by a generous endowment from long-time friends of the Sheehans who wish to remain anonymous. Neil Sheehan is the author of A Bright Shining Lie, which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1989. Susan Sheehan is the author of eight works of nonfiction. In 1983, she received a Pulitzer Prize for Is There No Place on Earth For Me?
Previously, the Sheehan Award was given in 2019 to Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald journalist who gave voice to Jeffrey Epstein’s long-ignored victims and prompted a legal re-examination of Epstein’s predatory behavior and the culture that enabled it; and in 2018 to New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey for their reporting on Harvey Weinstein, which elevated the #MeToo movement.