The 2027 Neal Conan Laureates
Updated: Oct 14
Announced September 29, 2026
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Latif Nasser, Lydia Polgreen, Pablo Torre and Lauren Williams are the inaugural 2027 Neal Conan Laureates.
The one-year honor recognizes journalists whose ingenuity, adaptability and perseverance have sustained rigorous work through accelerating change in the profession. Their careers offer aspiring journalists examples of how to carry journalism’s highest standards forward.
The Laureates honor is distinct from the Neal Conan Prize, which awards one mid-career journalist $50,000 in unrestricted support each year. The 2026 Prize recipient will be announced later this fall.
Laureates contribute priority nominations for the Prize; a selection committee chooses the recipient. They will be recognized at an invitation-only celebration in New York in November and take part in a half-day symposium with journalism students and independent journalists in spring 2027.
The symposium will be co-sponsored by the Journalism Protection Initiative at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, with journalism safety and press freedom among its themes.
Pablo Torre photo: Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images.