PUNCHING ABOVE OUR WEIGHT

Thanks to you, our trophy closet is overflowing.

- BY MONIKA BAUERLEIN AND CLARA JEFFERY

IT’S TOUGH sometimes, when you're a modestly sized, nonprofit newsroom, to look at the big dogs in journalism—the New York Times or CNN, with their thousands of journalists, or storied magazines like the New Yorker and the Atlantic—and not feel hopelessly outgunned. They can swarm dozens of journalists on a single story, or pay some $12,000 to duplicate a certain New York mayor's luxe travel experience. They have fleets of publicists to make sure every success is amplified. Our staff has been known to couchsurf to get a story, air-gap computers with the help of epoxy glue, or enlist a relative to play the guitar for music on our sister radio show, Reveal.

Nevertheless, or maybe because of this, we've often punched above our weight when the time comes to hand out awards for the best work across our industry. But this year? This year we're killing it. In the past several months we've won National Magazine Awards, Webbys, Polks, and duPonts; we're a finalist for a Pulitzer and several Emmys—basically if there’s an honor to bestow on journalism, it has been bestowed upon us.

Each of those honors has a unique origin story, but they all have one thing in common: They are the result of the merger last year between Mother Jones and Reveal, a union that gave us the ability to dig deeper, tell stories more powerfully, and reach broader audiences.