In the wake of two major disasters, beat reporters at The Washington Post examined systemic failures in response and recovery, and the human toll for affected communities. Journalist Brianna Sacks shares what she learned from those investigations, which won a large market award for beat reporting from the Society of Environmental Journalists. Read our Inside Story Q&A.

Two Ghanian video journalists traveled their country to document how contamination from illegal gold mining was harming the health of workers and nearby communities. Their resulting reporting not only won acclaim from their peers but also ignited a debate that resulted in the closing of polluting mining operations. Read more about their award-winning project and its impact in Inside Story Q&A.

A chemical found in widely used epoxy resins is an endocrine disruptor that remains largely unregulated, despite its ubiquity. That was the subject of a prizewinning explanatory reporting series that focused on the lesser-known bisphenol known as BADGE, and how it might affect artisan woodworkers, construction workers and many others. SEJournal talks with reporter Meg Wilcox (pictured) in this Inside Story Q&A.

The devastating 2023 East Palestine, Ohio, toxic train derailment left a legacy of illness and a town torn by competing understandings of the contamination’s aftereffects. A yearlong reporting initiative with photojournalist Rebecca Kiger and Time magazine writer Alejandro de la Garza worked to gain the community’s confidence and tell its story. Their prize-winning feature, in the latest Inside Story Q&A.

When reporters from Inside Climate News and The Texas Tribune teamed up on a multipart series about Texas environmental regulators, they found state agencies sidestepping science, the law and accountability. The beneficiaries? The oil and gas industry. Their prizewinning reporting was praised for its data analysis, and public records and field reporting. Read an Inside Story Q&A with Martha Pskowski of Inside Climate News.

As expanded development on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula encroaches on prime wildlife habitat, big cats find it harder to avoid people, and many wind up dead. In this Inside Story Q&A, Liza Gross of Inside Climate News describes how she and photographer/editor Michael Kodas worked with a local cougar protection team to track a family of big cats to their den and through the area.

A powerful politician and his family’s groundwater-polluting agricultural business were the focus of an award-winning series that delved into the intersection of politics, power, privilege and regulatory capture. In the latest Inside Story Q&A, journalist Yanqi Xu discusses how the reporting uncovered deep and unexpected impacts on small town economies, water quality and the living conditions of the hog farms’ neighbors.

A project of vast scope was needed to tell the untold story of stolen lands originally promised to Indigenous nations. But for Tristan Ahtone, it was the pursuit of "smaller" stories arising out of the detailed data that was the Grist team’s proudest result. Explore the high points — plus three key lessons — of this Pulliam Prize-winning project, in Ahtone’s Inside Story Q&A.

When a pair of journalists reported on a degraded Colombian mangrove swamp, they turned to two local fishermen to help tell the story, tapping into their experience as they worked to repair the ecosystem that fed their community. In the latest Inside Story Q&A, reporter Jacobo Patiño Giraldo explains their successful use of primary source solutions journalism.

Contaminated water sickened thousands of residents near Mexico City for 40 years — even as officials knew they were being poisoned. Then, an investigative news team turned its attention to the polluted region, and produced multiple video and text versions of an award-winning feature focused on the residents’ health, poverty and more. Read a revealing Q&A with investigative producer Carlos Carabaña in the new Inside Story.