American Banker scores 11 major journalism awards

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American Banker won 11 journalism awards during the past week, including its first Grand Neal, the highest of the honors announced at this year’s Jesse H. Neal business journalism awards. In addition, American Banker received General Excellence honors from the Society for the Advancement of Business Editing and Writing (SABEW).

American Banker’s limited series podcast Nobody’s Home, about housing blight and how it’s impacting the financial system, took home the most awards. It helped win four different prizes, including the first Neal for Best Podcast. Its host and writer, John Heltman, was also awarded a Neal for Best Range of Work and the prestigious McAllister Editorial Fellowship. Finally, John’s work was awarded the Grand Neal, the first such honor for American Banker and its parent company, SourceMedia.

Judges said Nobody’s Home was a “highly informative, thoroughly reported and professionally produced series of podcasts on a problem (abandoned housing) that receives too little attention, given its impact on communities of all sizes.” You can find out why it received so many accolades by listening to Nobody’s Home here, or downloading it for iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and Stitcher.

American Banker won four other Neal awards: Best News Coverage for its deep dive into worries in the consumer credit market, Best Commentary, Best Subject-related Package (a joint award with sister publication Financial Planning on sexual harassment in the workplace), and Best Website.

American Banker’s General Excellence award in this year’s SABEW’s contest is its second to date (the first was in 2013). The SABEWs received nearly 1,000 entries, submitted by 175 news organizations across the country, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Bloomberg, NPR and other household-name organizations.

In addition to the SABEW for General Excellence, American Banker won the Banking/Finance SABEW for an investigative feature by Kevin Wack: Bank CEO’s fire-and-rehire maneuver reaps windfall at taxpayer expense, a deeply-reported story on questionable practices by a Chicago banker. American Banker also won in SABEW’s Breaking News category, for Comerica scrambles to address fraud in prepaid benefits program by Kate Berry, a story that spurred changes by the bank and drew the attention of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

You can read all the winning entries below:

SABEW Awards:

• Bank CEO’s fire-and-rehire maneuver reaps windfall at taxpayer expense (Banking/Finance)
• Comerica scrambles to address fraud in prepaid benefits program (Breaking News)
• General Excellence

Neal awards:

Best News Coverage:

• Consumer debt is at an all-time high: Should banks be worried?
• The warning signs in consumer credit data
• Banks flock to personal lending, but at what risk?
• The pitfalls Discover’s new CEO sees in consumer lending
• Is it time to start worrying about consumer credit?

Best Podcast:

• Nobody’s Home

Best Subject-Related Package:

• Sexual harassment in the professional workplace

Best range of work (John Heltman):

• Nobody’s Home
• Behold the radical continuity of the Fed’s capital proposals
• Trump can’t fire Jerome Powell. Will he try anyway?
• Fed drops hammer on Wells Fargo as four board members ousted

Best Commentary:

• Mulvaney’s CFPB plan is dangerous
• Call for bank crackdown on gun sales is deeply misguided
• No, the Senate reg relief bill isn’t destroying Dodd-Frank

Best Website

• americanbanker.com