FreightWaves has brought home wins in two categories in the annual Jesse H. Neal Awards, considered the Pulitzer Prize of business journalism.
In the Friday awards ceremony, switched from an annual New York-based lunch to a virtual presentation because of the COVID-19 pandemic, FreightWaves won the Best News Coverage award for its articles on the collapse and bankruptcy of Celadon, the biggest U.S. truckload failure in almost 50 years.
Editorial staff whose contributions were singled out in the award application were Clarissa Hawes, Nate Tabak, John Paul Hampstead, Noi Mahoney, Jim Allen and Emily Szink.
FreightWaves also won the Best Website in its size category.
Each category has several finalists. The finalists are revealed in advance with the winner usually announced at the New York luncheon, but this time online. You can see the entire video of the awards on YouTube. The Best News Coverage award is at about 9:30 into the video. The Best Website is at about 37:30.
Not only did FreightWaves win two awards, it also was a finalist in three other categories: Best Media Brand (Overall Editorial Excellence); Best Use of Video/Webcast; and Best Industry Coverage for FreightWaves’ maritime coverage.
“We can’t overstate what a great day this is for the FreightWaves content team,” Craig Fuller, FreightWaves founder and CEO, said of the awards. “A few years ago, FreightWaves was just an idea. Now its editorial and web offerings are taking home the industry’s most prestigious award against companies that have been in the business for years. This is another affirmation of the enormous impact we have made on the audience for freight and logistics information and data, in all forms and channels.”
FreightWaves staff members followed up on Celadon as soon as they received information through industry sources that the troubled carrier would soon be closing down. The company’s new management was unable to overcome the damage done by the previous management’s activities, which ultimately led to criminal indictments.
“Through interviews with multiple sources inside Celadon, FreightWaves put out the initial information regarding the bankruptcy in what was to become the most read article in the company’s history up to that point,” according to the entry. “In the days that followed, FreightWaves moved quickly to add further depth to its early coverage.”
Some of the articles about Celadon produced by the staff and submitted for the award can be found here, here and here.
The FreightWaves website that won in the category of Best Website gets more than 3 million page views each month and hosts 1.4 million unique visitors. All top 50 carriers and third-party logistics providers are represented in the FreightWaves audience.
“The breadth of articles appearing daily on freightwaves.com and under the American Shipper title demonstrates FreightWaves’ commitment to providing comprehensive coverage of the global freight market,” FreightWaves stated in its entry for the website category.
Feature articles submitted as part of the entry dealt with the closure of Falcon Transportation, the impact of sanctions on the shipping market, and the impact on tariffs on the price of finished jet airplanes.The sweep of the subjects covered by the Neal Awards can be seen in the description of them by Connectiv, which runs the award selection and ceremony. “Neal winners have exposed corruption and conflicts of interest and brought attention to major new trends, brilliant leadership, innovative tactics, and key developments in global businesses,” it said.