The Syracuse Press Club is thrilled to announce the winner of our prestigious 2025 Bill Carey Award for Journalist of the Year.
The club annually recognizes one journalist who stands out among peers for contributions to news coverage in a 12-month period (2024).
Congratulations to Marnie Eisenstadt, our 2025 Journalist of the Year!
Marnie Eisenstadt is a public affairs reporter at Syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. She has more than two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics and institutions including mental health, addiction, housing, human services, youth violence and juvenile justice. She specializes in narrative storytelling and investigative reporting.
John Lammers, syracuse.com’s senior director of content, wrote this about Marnie:
“Day by day, story by story, Marnie Eisenstadt built in 2024 a rare news beat, a grateful audience and a remarkable body of work. Marnie dived into the deaths of three children at the hands of their parents. Marnie told the kids’ heartbreaking stories and uncovered the institutional failures that put the children at risk.
Neffy Harris, a 6 year old who loved Elmo, was killed by her mother, who beat her to death with a belt. County child protective workers had several chances to save Neffy, Marnie revealed, but they inexplicably kept returning her to the mother, a mentally ill drug addict. Ashton DeGonzaque, an 11-year-old Spiderman fan, died from an accidental drug overdose caused by his father. The juvenile system ignored many red flags to put a child under the care of a man incapable of even caring for himself, Marnie’s investigation found. Rykelan Brown, a 4 year old who loved Paw Patrol and his stuffed dinosaur, died from injuries suffered in a fall down some stairs. His father said it was an accident, but Marnie revealed the guy had a history of violence toward children. After Marnie’s story showing where social services dropped the ball here, too, cops arrested the father.
It was, in effect, an investigative juvenile services beat. Understand how difficult this work is. Cops aren’t talking; in some cases, they know less than Marnie. The sources are people in peril who are hard to find, tough to pin down and suspicious of institutions. Social service agencies can hide behind the confidentiality afforded juvenile cases.
Marnie developed the trust of crucial sources inside the system. She tracked down and won over the victims’ families and friends. Our readers appreciated Marnie’s advocacy for kids.
All year, she developed important enterprise on crime and safety. She broke news in several stories about the ambush murders of two law enforcement officers. She went deep on the rash of Kia car thefts and the impact on the victims, as well as the failures of the local cops and courts to attack juvenile crime. She revealed the daily attacks on the homeless by drug dealers outside a shelter, and it led to a quick remedy.
She broke the story on a well-known business executive canned because of sexual harassment. Her story on two honor students denied college aid because of government screwups won the attention of Sen. Chuck Schumer. He got it fixed.
On top of it all, Marnie is a great teammate. She brings along less-experienced reporters on stories, giving them an education. She even organized an office clothing drive for the homeless and a food drive for a church pantry.”
Marnie is also the 2018 New York State Associated Press Journalist of the Year and has numerous statewide awards for excellence in feature writing. She has a New York State Emmy Award for investigative reporting for “Drunk with Power,” a print and video series about a rogue AA group in Syracuse. She is a graduate of the Roy H. Park School of Journalism at Ithaca College and a mother of two teenaged daughters.
Congratulations Marnie, we look forward to honoring your incredible year of journalism at the SPC Awards on Saturday, May 3, 2025! SPC Awards dinner seats are filling up fast. This was a highly competitive year, and we are capping attendance at 200 guests. Buy your tickets and tables before Monday, April 21.
The prestigious Bill Carey Journalist of the Year Award is named after longtime Syracuse broadcaster Bill Carey. In a career that spanned more than 40 years, Bill was involved with covering virtually every major story in greater Syracuse since the 1970s. He finished his career as a senior reporter with Time Warner Cable News (now known as Spectrum News 1). Bill was a Syracuse Press Club Wall of Distinction honoree, and a recipient of the Bliven-Ganley-Rossi Career Achievement Award. He had won three Emmys, six RTNDA Murrow Awards and dozens of awards from the Syracuse Press Club and New York Associated Press Broadcasters Association. He was known as a skilled writer, a disciplined editor and a beloved mentor and guiding light to many young journalists. Bill died in 2015 and is missed by many.
Past winners:
• Syracuse.com‘s Glenn Coin named 2024 Journalist of the Year
• Iris St. Meran of NewsChannel 9 named 2023 Journalist of the Year
• Patrick O’ Toole of Spectrum News named 2022 Journalist of the Year
• The Post-Standard’s Patrick Lohmann named 2021 Journalist of the Year
• The Citizen’s Kevin Rivoli named 2020 Journalist of the Year