CT Mirror Towing Investigation Named National Award Finalist

The CT Mirror and ProPublica are finalists for one of American journalism’s top fairness honors, recognition earned through a joint investigation that already changed Connecticut law.

The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard named the two newsrooms finalists for the 2025 Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Journalism. That award traces back to members of the Taylor family, who owned and published The Boston Globe from 1872 until 1999. It exists to recognize reporting that advances fair, rigorous coverage of people who can’t easily push back against power.

The investigation that got them here was called “On the Hook.”

The project exposed how Connecticut’s towing industry had built a system that gutted low-income residents of their cars and their belongings, often without breaking a single state law. Reporters found that towing companies were selling towed vehicles within 15 days, one of the fastest turnaround windows in the country. That didn’t leave struggling owners much time to scrape together the fees, locate the impound lot, or even realize what had happened. Companies were also routinely undervaluing cars to speed those sales along, flat-out refusing credit card payments, and holding personal property locked in towed vehicles until customers paid up. The state’s Connecticut DMV’s towing regulations gave residents almost no effective recourse.

The response from Hartford wasn’t slow. The Department of Motor Vehicles announced it was reviewing towing practices within days of publication. The General Assembly moved quickly too, with lawmakers from both parties proposing sweeping changes to the laws governing the industry. Those changes passed later that year. It’s rare for a single investigation to produce that kind of direct, bipartisan legislative reaction, and it’s worth saying plainly that this one did.

Taylor Award judge Linda Robertson, a reporter at the Miami Herald, put it clearly in her assessment of the finalists. “Through painstaking data reporting and sensitive interviews, the Mirror and ProPublica exposed abuse of power, financial malfeasance and lack of oversight by the state DMV,” Robertson said. “The impact of the project was immediate, prompting a bipartisan effort by state legislators to overhaul towing laws — a true example of David vs. Goliath eye-opening journalism.”

CT Mirror Executive Editor Elizabeth Hamilton welcomed the recognition but kept the focus on the reporting itself. “We’re honored to be recognized by the Nieman Foundation as finalists for the Taylor Family Fairness Award alongside some of the country’s most respected news organizations,” Hamilton told CT Mirror. “This award reflects the extraordinary work of our journalists and our partners at ProPublica, and the power of deeply reported accountability journalism to produce real change.”

The other finalists give you a sense of how competitive the Taylor Award field is. The Miami Herald, The Tampa Bay Times, and The New York Times all earned finalist recognition in 2025, which means “On the Hook” was judged alongside some of the country’s best-resourced newsrooms and most experienced investigative teams. CT Mirror is a nonprofit. It doesn’t have their budgets. It won’t pretend otherwise.

The reporting team behind the project was substantial for a newsroom of CT Mirror’s size. CT Mirror Investigative Reporter Dave Altimari, Housing and Children’s Issues Reporter Ginny Monk, former Data Reporter José Luis Martínez, and former Photojournalist Shahrzad Rasekh all contributed. ProPublica brought Data Reporters Sophie Chou and Haru Coryne, Data Reporting Fellow Ken B. Morales, and Engagement Reporter Asima Silva to the collaboration. The combination of CT Mirror’s Connecticut sourcing and ProPublica’s data infrastructure was what made “Exposed and Expendable,” the broader series that “On the Hook” grew from, hit as hard as it did.

The Taylor Award winner will be announced in 2026. But the law changes have already passed, the DMV review has already happened, and 15 days is still the number that sits at the center of this story, the window that was short enough to strip people of their only transportation before they could do much about it.