Best magazine-style, long-form narrative feature in print or digital on an international story
Award Year: 2025
Award Name: The Ed Cunningham Award 2025-2026
Recipient: Jon Lee Anderson
Affiliation: The New Yorker
Honored Work: “A Witness in Assad’s Dungeons”
Syria’s suffering during its long civil war, and the torture inflicted on its dissenters, are almost numbingly familiar — even as the West often looked away. But Jon Lee Anderson, by zooming in on the divergent fates of two brothers, has produced an intimate, haunting tale of the lingering psychic toll.
Link to Winning Work:
“A Witness in Assad’s Dungeons”
Citation for Excellence:
Liam Taylor
The Economist’s 1843
“Dying for gold: who killed the miners of Buffelsfontein?”