Great Lakes Protection Fund Honors Peter Annin, Dan Egan, Tom Henry, Great Lakes Now, Institute for Nonprofit News and U.S. Water Alliance

We are excited to name three individuals and three organizations as recipients of the 2020 Great Lakes Leadership Award for Communication Excellence. This award celebrates the recipients’ outstanding storytelling efforts—better connecting their audiences to the ecosystem, its challenges, and efforts to solve those challenges. The 2020 awardees consistently make complicated issues accessible and remind us that powerful narratives can inspire action.

Winners of the 2020 Great Lakes Leadership Award for Communication Excellence are:

• Peter Annin, long-time environmental reporter and author of The Great Lakes Water Wars, who says we are leaving the century of oil and entering the century of water.
• Dan Egan, a reporter for The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and author of The New York Times bestseller The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, who was a Pulitzer Prize finalist twice for his coverage of invasive species in the Great Lakes.
• Tom Henry, reporter for The Toledo Blade, who has covered the Great Lakes full-time longer than anyone else.
• Great Lakes Now, a monthly television program and multi-media news hub elevating stories about how we enjoy, study, restore, and experience the world’s largest supply of surface freshwater.
• Institute for Nonprofit News, which, with its partners, produced Rust to Resilience, a reporting series about the impact of climate change on the Great Lakes and surrounding cities.
• US Water Alliance, a national nonprofit organization that advocates for racial justice, innovation, and progress in the management of water, including drinking water, in the Great Lakes region and across the country.

This year’s recipients have covered a range of threats to the Great Lakes – including invasive species, toxic algae blooms, climate change, racial inequities, stormwater runoff, outdated water infrastructure – and delivered solution-oriented stories of positive ecological impact.

Visit our awards page to read more about our 2020 Leadership Award winners.

Read the full press release.