Lynzy Billing Wins 2023 Michael Kelly Award for ProPublica Investigation
Finalists are from The Washington Post and the Associated Press.
Lynzy Billing is the winner of the 20th annual Michael Kelly Award for her story “The Night Raids,” published by ProPublica in December 2022. Billing’s intimate and piercing investigation revealed the incalculable human toll taken by CIA-backed Afghan special forces, also known as Zero Units, across villages and towns in Afghanistan.
In their commendation, the judges describe Billing’s reporting as courageous, determined, and unfaltering in its search for the truth. Billing is an investigative journalist and photographer who has reported on Afghanistan since 2019. She will be awarded a prize of $25,000.
Given annually by The Atlantic, the Michael Kelly Award honors journalists whose work exemplifies “the fearless pursuit and expression of truth,” qualities that defined Michael Kelly’s own life and career. Kelly was the first journalist killed while covering the Iraq War, in 2003. He served as editor of The Atlantic and National Journal when both magazines were publications of Atlantic Media, chaired by David G. Bradley. Bradley created the award in his honor.
Journalists from three other news organizations were recognized as finalists, and each will receive a $3,000 award: William Wan, of The Washington Post, for his empathetic deep dive into the struggles of the broken mental-health-care system’s most vulnerable patients; Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, Vasilisa Stepanenko, and Lori Hinnant, of the Associated Press, for their courageous and indispensable reporting from Mariupol and Izium during the earliest days of the Russia-Ukraine war; and Terrence McCoy, of The Washington Post, for documenting the lawless destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
Five judges selected the winner and the finalists: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a former NPR correspondent; Thomas Gebremedhin, vice president and executive editor of Doubleday; Julia Vitale, deputy editor at Air Mail; Ena Alvarado, a writer and former assistant editor at The Atlantic; and Cullen Murphy, the editor at large of The Atlantic.
A list of the past winners and finalists, as well as remembrances of Kelly from friends and colleagues, can be found at www.michaelkellyaward.com.
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