Credits

Won the inaugural Dao Prize for The Twitter Files

In 2023, the National Journalism Center awarded Public’s Michael Shellenberger, alongside Matt Taibbi of Racket and Bari Weiss of The Free Press, the inaugural Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism, recognizing their reporting on the Twitter Files.

“…won the 2023 Dao Grand Prize for the Twitter Files.”

Broke the story of San Francisco’s government-run drug use site

In 2022, The San Francisco Chronicle credited Public with first revealing that the city was permitting open drug use at its newly opened Tenderloin Linkage Center.

“…The revelation that people are using drugs at the week-old site was first reported on the Substack newsletter of Michael Shellenberger….”

First to name the Covid “patients zero”

In 2023, The Wall Street Journal credited Public for being the first to publish the names of three Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers who fell ill early in the COVID-19 outbreak. The Journal confirmed those names through its own sources.

“The researchers’ names were noted last week in an article in Public, which publishes on the Substack platform, and were independently confirmed by the Journal..”