Molly Ball of The Atlantic is the winner of the 2012 Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting.

Molly Ball

Ball won for her in-depth reporting on the 2012 election, including coverage of the presidential candidates and the campaign around gay-marriage referenda in four states. Her entry of five stories, submitted as examples of her work through the election year, “tells how America changed fundamentally last November,” as one judge described Ball’s work.

“Ms. Ball’s coverage is a superb example of journalism that helps us understand our electoral process and illuminates the people and policies that shape us as a nation,” said Lorraine Branham, dean of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, which sponsors the prize, at Syracuse University. “This is reporting with the engaging detail and informed insights that were hallmarks of Robin Toner’s outstanding work.”

From the judges: “Ms. Ball's reporting on the 2012 presidential campaign was the most impressive I have read all year.  She wrote with compelling authority and reported with her eyes ears and feet.  She deftly made herself a surrogate for her readers in each of her stories.”

The Stories: From Garance Franke-Ruta, Senior Editor & Politics Channel Editor, The Atlantic: “I believe these stories, taken from a year’s worth of her online campaign coverage, demonstrate, in their breadth and range, depth and detail, the high standards and originality of vision shown by the late Robin Toner.

When I first met Molly in 2011, she described herself as “a completist.” Her natural instinct for thoroughness in reporting and writing gave her stories a tucked in quality unusual in the helter-skelter world of online media. It’s an instinct has made her stories stand out over the past year in a noisy and highly competitive news environment, and also helped these stories stand the test of time.