The Cancer Letter staff won seven first-place Dateline Awards from the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists—three for journalism and four for design.
The Cancer Letter’s entries recognized by SPJ in 2022 include investigative journalism, commentary, series, infographics, illustrations, and editorial cartoons. This is the third consecutive year The Cancer Letter has won an award for infographics and cartooning, and the fifth consecutive year The Cancer Letter has won first-place awards for illustration.
Following The Cancer Letter’s investigation of Axel Grothey, a prominent GI oncologist who had been given the option to resign from Mayo Clinic due to unethical sexual relationships with women he mentored, discussion of sexual misconduct in academic medicine came out of the shadows and flooded Twitter.
The aftermath of this series, which won a first place award for investigative journalism, led to a reconfiguration of policies on sexual harassment, misconduct, and gender bias across biomedical research and academic medicine—and directly resulted in an August 2021 congressional letter that demands answers from NIH on policies to address sexual misconduct.
An illustration also made a splash on Twitter: illustrator Katie Goldberg’s cover art for a story about closing the diversity gap in the cancer centers’ workforce celebrates some of the cancer community’s leading voices on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (The Cancer Letter, Nov. 5, 2021). As something of a “Where’s Waldo” of oncology, many sought to identify themselves and their mentors in the image. An answer sheet was made available the following week, and prints can be purchased in The Cancer Letter’s store.
First-place awards:
- Investigative Journalism, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Alexandria Carolan, Paul Goldberg, and Matthew Ong, “Ending Sexual Misconduct in Academic Medicine.”
Editor’s note: Credit is also deserved by Jacqueline Ong and David Koh, who created an interactive timeline that made this complex investigation easy to visualize and navigate.
- Series, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Matthew Ong, “Reducing Systemic Disparities & Inequities in the U.S. Cancer Workforce.”
- Commentary & Criticism, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Matthew Ong, “Joe Biden: A Presidential Agenda for Cancer.” (The Cancer Letter, Jan. 22, April 9, June 18, 2021)
- Art/Photo Illustration, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Katie Goldberg, “Illustrating Oncology in 2021”
- Editorial Cartoon, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Katie Goldberg, “Cancer Politics: Bypass Budgets, the National Cancer Act, and Texas.”
- Infographic, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Jacqueline Ong, “A 25-year retrospective: How NCCN changed the way cancer medicine is practiced—and paid for.”
- Front Page Design, Newsletter/Trade Publications, first place: Jacqueline Ong and Katie Goldberg, “Health Equity and Social Change Section Covers.”
