loading . . . The National Press Club Announces Annual Journalism Awards
WASHINGTON, June 24, 2026 — The National Press Club announced today that CBS News, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, PBS Frontline, and NPR are among the winners of this year’s prestigious National Press Club Journalism Awards. In a contest that included news outlets and journalists from across the country, spanning a range of topics and media forms, the Press Club selected a total of 18 journalism entries for recognition this year (full list of winners below).
The award-winning entries being honored brought clarity and humanity to some of the most covered events of the year, gave meaningfulness and urgency to topics in danger of being overlooked, and demonstrated journalism's continued necessity and relevance in modern America.
“High-quality journalism deserves to be celebrated, and we’re proud to recognize our honorees for producing some of the very best journalistic works of the year,” said National Press Club President Mark Schoeff Jr. “Looking at the breadth of coverage this year, often delivered in increasingly complex and challenging environments, we’re reminded that the free, independent press that has been central to America’s democracy over the past 250 years remains hard at work.”
Multiple awards recognize journalism that captured the growing toll extreme weather is having on American communities. CBS News will earn the Breaking News Award in the broadcast category for its comprehensive coverage of the Los Angeles wildfires — coverage that included dozens of journalists collaborating to tell one of the defining stories of 2025. The Los Angeles Times will receive an award for their print coverage of the fires.
Separately, PBS Frontline and NPR’s nearly hour-long investigative piece, “Hurricane Helene's Deadly Warning,” will receive an award for showing how federal flood maps fail to cover vast numbers of at-risk properties, leaving millions of homeowners unknowingly at risk and ineligible for federal flood insurance — a problem that property developers have actively worked to preserve.
The documentary “The Price of Milk: Immigrants Behind the American Dairy” takes a fresh look at the most consumed dairy product in America, exploring the critical role immigrants play in getting milk from farms to tables across the country. CBS will receive the Consumer Journalism Award for taking viewers inside this uniquely American industry that is also 90 percent immigrant-powered.
The staff of WIRED will receive the Lee Walczak Award for Political Analysis for “DOGE Takeover,” an investigation into the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the team behind dramatic cuts in federal spending, amid a year in which more than 300,000 federal employees exited the workforce.
Additionally, Hannah Natanson of The Washington Post will earn the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism for a consequential and deeply human look at DOGE actions. Natanson talked to thousands of federal employees, documenting the complex struggles facing the federal workforce and examining the impacts of DOGE’s efficiency-related actions on workers who remained on the job.
The Washington Post will receive the Joan M. Friedenberg Online Journalism Award for their deep-dive into TikTok. At a time when one in five Americans, and nearly half of adults under 30, regularly get news from the social media app, The Post’s interactive, data-driven investigation analyzed roughly 15 million TikTok videos and data from approximately 1,000 users to reveal how TikTok's algorithm shapes user behavior.
The Wall Street Journal’s Joel Schectman and Arun Viswanatha’s yearlong investigation covering seven decades of UFO reports concluded the U.S. military fabricated evidence of alien technology and allowed rumors to fester to cover up real secret-weapons programs. The reporters got the Pentagon to respond and received letters from even the strongest UFO believers, saying the story “opened their eyes to the truth.” Their piece, “The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America's UFO Mythology,” will earn them the Michael A. Dornheim Award for Aerospace, Defense, and Aviation Reporting.
The 2026 awards dinner will be held at the National Press Club on Wednesday, August 27. The evening will begin with a 6 p.m. reception in the Holeman Lounge, followed by dinner and the awards program at 7 p.m. in the Club’s ballroom.
Tickets are $80 for the general public and $70 for National Press Club members and can be purchased online.
Media Inquiries: Please contact [email protected] for media inquiries. For program and event inquiries, contact Cecily Scott Martin at [email protected] or (202) 662-7528. https://www.press.org/newsroom/national-press-club-announces-annual-journalism-awards
