A Prize That Boosts Freelance Journalists

“It wasn’t that long ago that I was having a hard time getting editors to reply to my email and just starting out,” freelance journalist Rebecca Nagle says. Nagle’s journalism career, which began in 2017, has already had an outsize impact. Last month, she and another freelancer, Darcy Courteau, won the Heising-Simons Foundation’s $100,000 American Mosaic Journalism Prize recognizing their in-depth reporting on underrepresented communities.

Nagle is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. (She’s shown here in front of the Cherokee National History Museum in Tahlequah, Okla.) A former community organizer, Nagle got hooked on journalism after writing opinion essays informed by her advocacy. Today, her print and audio reporting often covers violence against Native women and cultural appropriation, among other Native American issues. She produced the podcast series This Land about Carpenter v. Murphy, a case of murder and tribal sovereignty argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019. Judges praised her clear reporting on an arcane legal issue with far-reaching human impact.

“I hope that the success of the podcast will show editors and other people in decision-making power that the public is really ready to hear native stories,” Nagle says. “It needs to be part of what they cover.” She also hopes her award will help spotlight the work of Native journalists.

The Heising-Simons Foundation, which started the prize three years ago, taps a national committee of 100 to 150 media professionals to nominate talented freelance journalists.

The prize focuses on freelance journalists because they can commit the enormous amount of time it takes to know a subject deeply but lack the support of a news organization, says Brian Eule, director of communications at the California family foundation.

While Nagle is still deciding how she’ll spend the prize — the size of which she says is mind-boggling — she’s certain it will deepen her work. “I think what it’ll allow me to do is to report on the things that I really want to report on and really take the time and space to develop those stories.”