This award was established in 2009. Winners to date are:
2022: Lucy Revill, Mary Argue and James Pocock, Massey University, for their investigation into the “mouldy misery of Wellington’s rental market“.
2021: No awards made.
2020: No monetary awards made, but Steven Walton, NZ Broadcasting School, was commended for his work on Christchurch roading upgrades and the water chorination debate.
2019: No awards made.
2018: Meriana Johnsen, Massey University, for a disturbing story in the Sunday Star-Times on police charging people for other offences after they made distressed suicide calls to 111.
2017: Baz Macdonald, Massey University, for a Newsroom article on how our welfare laws haven’t kept up with modern relationships.
2016: Audrey Seaman for her article ‘Protecting the protectors when they come home‘, published in the Dominion Post on 31 October 2015.
2015: Jointly:
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- Elizabeth Beattie For Marjorie: Experiencing the 20th century through the mental health system, a wonderfully written story about the writer’s grandmother’s experiences with mental illness.
- Mava Moayyed Two years on from Roast Busters, an analysis of the way members of the public used social media to fan public outrage about insulting questions put by broadcasters John Tamihere and Willie Jackson to a young women who was a victim of the Roast Busters.
- Norman Zafra A long recovery: rebuilding after a super storm, a fascinating account of the way land ownership in the Philippines has obstructed rebuilding after Typhoon Haiyan.
2014: Chloe Winter for her article “War against killers we face at work“, published in the Herald on Sunday on 3 November 2013.
2013: shared between Ruth Keber for ‘The New Maori Muslims’, North & South (March 2013) and Deena Coster for a portfolio of articles in the Taranaki Daily News (June-Sept 2013).
2012: Karen Abplanalp, AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre, for an article in Auckland’s Metro magazine in December 2011 on the NZ Superannuation Fund’s investment in the Grasberg mine in West Papua.
2011: Josh Gale, Auckland University of Technology, for a series of stories in the AUT student newspaper Te Waha Nui, and later in the New Zealand Herald, on prostitution of girls as young as 12 in central Auckland.
2010: Ryan Bridge, Massey University, Wellington, for articles about Porirua as “the rheumatic fever capital of New Zealand” (CityLife, Porirua) and revealing that New Plymouth National MP Jonathan Young failed to disclose his directorship of a superannuation trustee fund to Parliament’s Register of Pecuniary Interests (Daily News, New Plymouth).
2009: Amanda Fisher, Michael Hasumi-Dickison, Motoko Kakubayashi, Chloe Vaughan, Rory MacKinnon and Sarah Taane, all of Massey University, Wellington, for a 3-month investigation into a potential health risk from contamination at the former Masterton gasworks (Wairarapa Times-Age).
