Excited and honored to be a finalist in the Walkley Foundation Mid-Year Media Prizes for 2025 Freelance of the Year. The nominated stories are for a body of work titled “Fighting for the future”: The people at the front line of a changing planet’. They ran in Nature, Yale Environment 360 and The Monthly magazine. Huge congratulations to my fellow finalists Jack Ryan and Prue Lewarne, for their extraordinary work. Freelancing is pretty brutal business, though in recent years I have been lucky to enjoy support and some time to work on these kinds of long haul, public interest journalism projects in my role at the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne. My focus has been to try to use that opportunity to pursue stories that would otherwise likely go under the radar. A huge thanks to the editors who took a chance on me, and all the scientists, activists and community members in PNG and Solomon Islands who trusted me with their insights and stories. Winner will be announced on 19 June.

Freelance Journalist of the Year Prize

• Jo Chandler, Nature, The Monthly, Yale Environment 360, ‘Fighting for the future: The people at the front line of a changing planet’
• Prue Lewarne, SBS Dateline, SBS World News, ‘The Beast – Mexico’s Deadliest Train’, ‘Argentina’s Milei’, ‘Argentina Poverty’
• Jackson Ryan, The New York Times, The Monthly, ‘Body of Work – Longform Narrative Journalism’