Jaweed Kaleem
Jaweed Kaleem, a national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, placed first. His artful narratives of five Americans revealed a poetic mosaic about the nature of religion in the age of Trump. Kaleem’s winning entry included a feature of one of Auschwitz’s last remaining survivors and a story about a rural Idaho Mormon family that spent a lifetime preparing for disasters. One juror observed that “Kaleem’s depiction of an emerging clergyman illustrated the gritty reality of lived religion in an era of zoom worship”. His investigation of a Catholic parish priest to immigrants who worked for Smithfield was an exposé of the intersection of religion, citizenship, food, Covid, and politics. The winning entry also included Kaleem’s portrayal of a Christian Reform Church pastor’s emotional struggle to leave his church and his ministry over Trump.
Example of winning work: In One of the Last Places to Likely See Coronavirus, Disaster Prep is a Way of Life