Mission Local wins 12 prizes at California Journalism Awards

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Mission Local won a dozen awards at this year’s California Journalism Awards ceremony on Saturday, including two first-place wins for in-depth reporting and informational graphics stemming from last year’s election coverage.

We practically swept the informational graphics category, thanks to our outstanding team of data reporters, winning first-, third-, and fourth-place prizes.

The awards were presented at a gala in Los Angeles on May 17, put on by the California News Publishers Association to honor the best in journalism across the state in 2024. Honors are given in different size categories; since we’re growing so quickly, we were bumped up two size divisions this year.

“We’ve been promoted several weight divisions, but we still managed to punch above our weight,” said Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local’s managing editor. “Last year was very, very good to us.” 

Mission Local won 12 prizes in 10 categories:

• First place for in-depth reporting went to Joe Rivano Barros, Will Jarrett and Joe Eskenazi for our BigMoneySF series, detailing the vast network of wealthy donors and nonprofits bankrolling San Francisco’s election. The stories in that series included our network graph of donors, our in-depth look at Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, and our profile of billionaire Michael Moritz.
• First place for informational graphics went to Kelly Waldron, Junyao Yang, and Xueer Lu for a variety of graphics detailing the 2024 San Francisco election, including our map on how Daniel Lurie won the Asian vote, how redistricting hurt one candidate while helping another, our chart on how new each candidate was to their district, and our “How much did your vote cost?” calculator.
• Second place in profiles went to Naomi Beth Marcus for her terrific profile of Chester Moody, who grew up in the Jim Crow South and learned to be a dental technician after extracting his own molar with a pair of pliers.
• Third place in homelessness reporting went to Abigail Vân Neely for her in-depth look at why some San Francisco homeless people choose the street over shelter.
• Third (and fourth) place for information graphics went to Will Jarrett for two BigMoneySF visuals: The network map of major donors, and the scrollytelling explainer on how nonprofits use U.S. tax law for political giving.
• Fourth place in enterprise news reporting went to Joe Rivano Barros, Will Jarrett, and Joe Eskenazi for BigMoneySF.
• Fourth place in local election coverage went to Joe Rivano Barros, Kelly Waldron, Junyao Yang, Xueer Lu, and H.R. Smith for our “See How They Run” series, following the major mayoral candidates on the campaign trail.
• Fourth place (and fifth) in illustration was awarded to Neil Ballard, our top-rate cartoonist, for his drawing of Michael Mortiz lobbing a grenade at City Hall and his illustration of “small business owner” Mark Farrell.
• Fifth place in public service goes to Eleni Balakrishnan for her piece on under-the-table rent payments at public housing on Potrero Hill. 
• Fifth place in writing goes to H.R. Smith for her amazing “So many Speedo jokes at Aaron Peskin’s roast,” which made us laugh like little else can.

The full list of winners can be found here. 

Last year, Mission Local was honored with “general excellence” at the awards show, the top prize of the night. Our columnist, Eskenazi, also took home both first and second place for columns last year, part of six prizes we got all in all.

This year, we were awarded twice as many.