State reporter earns a top spot in national competition for science-related coverage
State Media Co. projects reporter Chiara Eisner earned a top spot for the 2021 Evert Clark/Seth Payne Award, a national competition for young science journalists around the country.
Eisner won strong praise for her investigative reporting published in Feb. 2021 on how horseshoe crabs were being bled for COVID-19 vaccine testing, despite the method being considered unnecessary and dated by many conservationists. In May, Eisner published a second article that looked further into the company that bleeds the animals in South Carolina, Charles River Laboratories, that was also considered for the competition.
The series of articles helped her earn an honorable mention for the award given by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing (CASW). STAT reporter Nicholas St. Fleur earned first place for his reporting on topics focusing around race, medicine and research.
“Eisner’s investigation on the industrial exploitation of horseshoe crabs is a model of dogged reporting,” CASW wrote in an announcement. “She won accolades for challenging a powerful company that other journalists have had trouble penetrating.”
Prior to coming to Columbia and joining The State’s projects team, Eisner worked as a freelance investigative journalist, writing articles and producing work for WIRED, NPR, Scientific American, The Intercept and others.
Eisner’s deep-dive for WIRED on how the FDA has long questioned the safety of Prevagen, a popular dietary health supplement for memory loss made from a synthetic jellyfish protein, and her reporting for Scientific American, on how the lack of oversight and rollbacks has made methane emission leaks from the oil and gas industry hard to detect, also helped her win the award.
“I could tell she asked the difficult questions,” one judge noted.
After studying and working in the fields of public health and design, The State reporter started her journalism career writing about science and technology for The Economist as an intern in London. She earned her master’s degree in investigative reporting from the Columbia Journalism School and was a fellow for The Marshall Project, covering criminal justice, in New York City.
“To see our team’s investigations receive recognition at a national level is very exciting,” Eisner said. “I’m lucky to be working for editors that encourage my reporting and give me time to do it as well as I can.”