ANN ARBOR—The Livingston Awards for Young Journalists and the University of Michigan announced today the 2013 finalists in local, national and international reporting.

The finalists, who represent the top 10 percent of entries received, will move to the final round of judging. The awards honor the best professionals under the age of 35 in traditional and new forms of journalism.

Funding provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and U-M to support a new emphasis on digital media efforts and to build a permanent endowment resulted in an 85 percent increase in digital entries and 50 percent increase in entries overall.

The Livingston Awards national judging panel will review all final entries and meet in person to select the winners in local, national and international reporting. The national judges are Christiane Amanpour of CNN and ABC News; Ken Auletta, media and communications writer, The New Yorker; Dean Baquet, managing editor, The New York Times; Charles Gibson, former anchor of ABC News; Ellen Goodman, author and co-founder and director of The Conversation Project; John Harris, editor-in-chief, POLITICO; Clarence Page, syndicated columnist; and Anna Quindlen, author.

“Being named a finalist signifies high achievement and the promise of more and even better things to come,” Charles Eisendrath, Livingston Awards founding director, said. “Each year, the judging process begins with a reading out of the names, titles and subjects of this fine work. Then follows a discussion among the judges that I consider the best seminar of the year about the ingredients of the great journalism, no matter in which branch of the media.”

The national judges will introduce the winners June 12 at a luncheon in New York.

The 2013 finalists, who include print, broadcast, documentary and digital journalists, are:

International Reporting:
Matthieu Aikins, Rolling Stone; Mariana Atencio, Univision Network News; Nate Berg, Next City; Julia Cooke, The Virginia Quarterly Review; Eve Fairbanks, Moment Magazine; Ashley Harrell, Lindsay Fendt, SB Nation; Jonathan M. Katz, Foreign Policy; Irene Jay Liu, Reuters; Andrew MacAskill, Bloomberg News; Luke Mogelson, The New York Times Magazine; Tomas Ocaña, Univision Network News; Mattathias Schwartz, The New Yorker; Antoni Slodkowski, Mari Saito, Reuters; Mehul Srivastava, Sarah Shannon, Bloomberg News; Chris Walker, Morgan Hartley, Forbes

National Reporting:
Sarah Abdurrahman, WNYC, New York City/National Public Radio; Jonathan Allen, Reuters; Rachael Bale, The Center for Investigative Reporting; Lisa Bernard-Kuhn, The Cincinnati Enquirer; Lisa Biagiotti, “deepsouth”; Jordan Conn, Grantland.com; Esme Deprez, Bloomberg Businessweek; Vytenis Didziulis, Univision News Network; Tim Elfrink, Miami New Times; Ellen Gabler, Allan James Vestal, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Garrett M. Graff, Washingtonian Magazine; Chris Hamby, The Center for Public Integrity; Tim Higgins, Bloomberg News; Julia Ioffe, The New Republic; Paul Kiel, ProPublica; Monica Potts, The American Prospect; Nicholas Schmidle, The New Yorker; Matthew Shaer, The Atavist; Matt Viser, The Boston Globe

Local Reporting:
Dugan Arnett, The Kansas City Star; Christopher Baxter, The Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ; Emily DePrang, The Texas Observer; Duaa Eldeib, Chicago Tribune; Ryan Gabrielson, The Center for Investigative Reporting; Gus Garcia-Roberts, Newsday, Long Island, NY; Erica L. Green, The Baltimore Sun; Mike Hixenbaugh, The Virginian-Pilot; Will Hobson, Michael LaForgia, Tampa Bay Times; Jared S. Hopkins, Chicago Tribune; Kathryn Joyce, Slate; Derek Kravitz, The New Yorker; Aitana V. Martinez, Hoy Los Angeles; J. David McSwane, Sarasota Herald-Tribune; Eric Moskowitz, The Boston Globe; Joe O’Sullivan, Rapid City (SD) Journal; Noah Pransky, WTSP-TV, Tampa Bay; Robert Samuels, The Washington Post; Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica; Garrett Therolf, Los Angeles Times; Kris Turner, The Toledo Blade

About The Livingston Awards
The Livingston Awards at the University of Michigan honor outstanding achievement by journalists under the age of 35 in local, national and international reporting with prizes of $10,000. As the largest all-media, general reporting prize in American journalism, the Livingston Awards judge print, broadcast and online entries against one another.

By recognizing the best young talent early in their careers, the Livingston Awards support the work of young journalists, create role models for the next generation of news consumers and advance excellence in journalism. For more, visit Livawards.org.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. The foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit knightfoundation.org.