Winner: Shivé Prema, SBS News, “How a spaghetti meme reveals something ‘scary’ about this tech’s future”

Judges’ Citation:

A deceptively simple piece of journalism that meets audiences where they are while doing something genuinely rigorous. The layering of personal storytelling, expert analysis, and institutional transparency around SBS's own AI policy elevates the work beyond a single story. The reporter also demonstrates not just technical literacy but deep fluency in the cultures around AI, modelling how newsrooms can interrogate emerging technologies with their audiences, not just at them.

Highly Commended

Aisha Dow, Nigel Gladstone and The Age Visual Stories Team, The Age, “Bidding Blind”

Matt Garrow, Ashlynne McGhee and Samuel Cornell, The Conversation, “The Instagram effect: dying for the perfect photo”

Shortlisted

The Conversation Digital Storytelling Team, The Conversation, “Scam Factories: The inside story of Southeast Asia’s fraud compounds”