Impact Award Nomination Form

Carrick Mollenkamp, left, and Mark Whitehouse, right, received the inaugural NYFWA impact award in Sept. 2019 for their early and prescient coverage of Libor’s irregularities at the Wall Street Journal in 2008

The Honor

The New York Financial Writers’ Association created the Impact Award to honor a distinguished story or body of work by reporters whose work spurred change, irrespective of when the story or stories were published. The idea behind the honor is to elevate stories that have a demonstrable impact on the world, whether by spurring investigations, changing laws or holding the powerful to account.

These things do not happen overnight. It may take months, even years, before investigations happen, laws get changed or wrongdoers are held to account for facts brought to light by early and prescient reporting that puts an important issue on the public agenda. That is why we decided to eschew the traditional Jan. 1 – Dec. 31 eligibility criteria that accompanies most journalism award contests. For this honor, what matters most is the impact spurred by the reporting – not when it published.

For our inaugural Impact Award, given out in Sept. 2019, the NYFWA board honored Carrick Mollenkamp and Mark Whitehouse for their 2008 reports, published in the Wall Street Journal, which first demonstrated that the world’s most important interest rate benchmark, Libor, was becoming unreliable. The news stories helped expose a global interest-rate manipulation scandal that resulted in billions of fines levied against large banks and set in motion the demise of the Libor benchmark in 2021. Click here for the full list of Impact Award Winners.

Judging Criteria

A panel of judges appointed by the NYFWA board will review and judge all entries. The entries will be judged based on the impact spurred by the reporting. The prior calendar year will be prioritized for purposes of gauging impact. Judges will have the discretion to consider stories whose impact occurred earlier, but more weight will be given to reporting that spurred change more recently. For example, for the 2020 Impact Award, judges primarily looked for examples of impact that occurred in 2019. Judges reserve the right to recommend to the board that no award be given if no entry merits the honor.

Eligibility Rules

We welcome your entry for this year’s Impact Award. The deadline for online submissions is September 30, 2024. Please make sure your entry abides by the following eligibility criteria:

• Any U.S.-based news organization, including foreign news organizations with bureaus in the U.S., are eligible to apply, regardless of medium or circulation size. Online, print, audio and television news outlets are all eligible. Collaborative projects among multiple outlets are eligible so long as at least one outlet is U.S.-based or has a U.S. editorial presence.
• Reporters, including freelancers, are welcome to nominate their own work or to have their editors nominate them on their behalf. Each news organization can have multiple entries, up to five total. Persons nominating their own work are limited to one entry each.
• Stories nominated for the award must feature reporting on a business or financial topic. Entries without a clear business or financial angle are not eligible.
• Articles nominated for the award can be published anytime (no time restrictions apply). However, the impact spurred by the stories must have occurred within the prior calendar year or in the recent past. What does “in the recent past" mean? Stories that spurred change more recently will be given more weight by the judges.

If you have questions about eligibility, please email contact@nyfwa.org and we’ll happily clarify them.

Nomination Form

To nominate a story or body of work for the honor, fill out the form below. Please provide all information requested. Incomplete entries will not be considered.