Olivia Carville and Cecilia D’Anastasio, reporters at Bloomberg Businessweek, are the recipients of the 2025 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism from Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications.
They are honored for “Unsafe Online,” a series of investigations published in 2024.
The stories highlight the dangers lurking online for teens on various social media platforms. It also discusses new legal strategies victims and their families are trying to employ to bring social media giants to justice.
“The John Bartlow Martin Award goes to writers whose work is in the public interest, exposes social injustice and do so with strong narrative storytelling,” said Medill professor Patti Wolter, who chairs the award, in a statement. “These stories are beautifully emblematic of the award. All three pieces are riveting—hard to read due to the subject matter, but are also can’t-put-down urgent.”
“Over the three years I’ve been reporting on the dangers of the digital world, I’ve observed the conversation around online child safety shift from ‘could these apps have negative impacts on mental health?’ to ‘this is a full-blown public health crisis for our children,’” said Carville in a statement. “These stories are about more than just the horrors kids face in the online world; they are about the extreme consequences that can occur offline — in the real world — and the ongoing fight for corporate accountability.”
D’Anastasio worked on a story in the series focused on Roblox, a popular gaming app for tweens and teens.
“There has been endless hand-wringing over video games’ impact on children. We didn’t want to rehash bad science or surface-level critiques of games, which we know are one of the primary ways kids form bonds with each other today. What we saw on Roblox warranted deeper scrutiny,” said D’Anastasio in a statement. “Roblox implemented a lot of changes after our report. Children under 13 are now banned from social hangout zones and messaging each other outside of games. Parents have more control over and visibility into kids’ behavior on the platform. We’ll be on the lookout for more ways to impact positive change in gaming and tech generally through investigative reporting.”
#Bloomberg #Businessweek #wins #Martin #Award
