The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine announced this week that ProPublica is the winner of the 2016 Communication Award in the Online category. The annual honor recognizes excellence in reporting and communicating science, engineering, and medicine to the general public.
ProPublica was recognized for “Killing the Colorado,” a six-part series on the water crisis in the American West. The stories and interactives by ProPublica's Abrahm Lustgarten, Naveena Sadasivam, Al Shaw and David Sleight – which contest judges called “an outstanding interactive review of how decades of avarice, ignorance, and indifference led to an environmental disaster" – dispelled myths about the causes of the crisis and helped reset the debate about what reform ought to look like.
You can see a list of all 2016 Communication Awards winners here.