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FreightWaves takes top honor in prestigious Neal Awards

Company wins for Best Media Brand (Overall Editorial Excellence)

FreightWaves, along with its American Shipper brand, was honored Wednesday for Best Media Brand (Overall Editorial Excellence) in the 67th annual Jesse H. Neal Awards. It’s the most prestigious accolade in a contest considered the Pulitzer Prize of business-to-business journalism.

“The judges found their integrated supply chain coverage incredibly on-brand and forward-thinking,” speaker Bill McDowell noted during a virtual event at which FreightWaves was presented the honor in its revenue category. “Their amazing level of offerings and event catalog were impressive.”

“This award is a major affirmation of FreightWaves’ commitment to excellence in covering and providing expert insights into the freight, transportation and logistics industry,” said FreightWaves founder and CEO Craig Fuller. “This all-staff honor pulls together journalistic, market, broadcast, technical, events and social media expertise from across multiple departments. We take enormous pride in being the go-to resource for our industry.”

There were approximately 500 entries in the Neal Awards this year.


The FreightWaves office (pre-pandemic) in Chattanooga, Tennessee.(Photo: FreightWaves)

For Best Media Brand, FreightWaves’ entry notes, “FreightWaves and its American Shipper sister brand report supply chain news and provide expert perspective on the world of freight across a broad spectrum of media platforms.” Those include traditional news articles, webcasts, podcasts, newsletters, social media, virtual events, apps and email.

The Neals describes the Best Media Brand honor as follows: “This category recognizes a media brand’s overall excellence by evaluating its depth of offerings to its audience across all media. An entry will be evaluated on how clearly it aligns its editorial mission with journalistic excellence, presentation, service to readers, innovation, and use of multiple content platforms to serve its audience. The winning entry will show outstanding ability to work across the range of media now required by a brand, while maintaining high levels of editorial craftsmanship, journalistic enterprise, and innovation. Winning entries are likely to include substantive work dealing with a number of subjects or developments of importance to the target audience or industry.”

FreightWaves was also a Neal Awards finalist for Best Website, Best New Product for the company’s streamlined pivot to virtual events in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Best Use of Video/Webcast and Best Infographics.

This is only the second year FreightWaves has entered the contest. It was also a winner in 2020.


FreightWaves is the leading source for information about the trucking, maritime, air, rail and intermodal freight markets. In 2021, FreightWaves publishes content that drives over 3 million page views and 1 million unique visitors each month.

Steve Barrett

A copy editor for FreightWaves since 2019, Steve Barrett has worked as an editor and/or reporter for The Associated Press as well as newspapers in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Nebraska. He also served as a senior managing editor for a medical marketing company, collaborating with some of the nation's most respected health care organizations and specialists in major markets in New York and Pennsylvania. He earned a Master of Mass Communications degree from the University of Georgia and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish from the University of South Dakota.