The Pulitzer Prizes won't be announced until Monday, but Investigative Reporters and Editors and the custodians of Syracuse University's Mirror Awards for reporting on the media industry have announced their winners and finalists. (The Mirror Awards announced finalists only; the winners will be announced at a June 5 ceremony in New York.)

Several science, environment and technology stories are among the winners and finalists.

The Seattle Times was a finalist for an IRE award with a story on "the dark side of elephant captivity," and National Geographic made the finals with a piece called "Blood Ivory," about the ivory trade. The Charlotte Observer was a finalist for a story called "Prognosis: Profits," about aggressive hospital billing practices. And you can find others in the IRE list on failures of medical care and social assistance programs, groundwater contamination, black lung, and tissue donations. 

If I'm not mistaken, almost all of these science, medical, or science-leaning stories were finalists, not winners. (The Belleville News Democrat (Ill.) won in the small print/online category for a story on the failure of a state agency to prevent the deaths of severely disabled adults in their own homes.)

 The rest of the winning stories dealt with such things as the Benghazi consulate attacks, prisons, schools, police, and political corruption. 

The Mirror Award finalists include a piece on coverage of the gun crisis in Philadelphia, one on a photographer with PTSD, and other stories that do not deal with scientific or medical topics, but which should be of interest to journalists of all kinds.

-Paul Raeburn