Happy holidays, Meteor readers,

If we had to pick a single phrase to describe this last year, it would be A LOT. All caps very necessary. A lot happened, a lot changed, and a lot of people lost everything.

It was a lot of year.

But there was also a lot of great reporting, much of it by women. Despite the attacks on journalists, the doxxing, the name-calling—the “quiet, piggy” of it all—women reporters have been getting it done. So for our final newsletter of 2025, we revisit the pieces that informed us (and the world), changed our perspectives, or even just made us laugh when we really needed it.

We’re grateful for the work of our peers and for all of you. (And if you want to support the work we do, it’s easy!)

Catch you on the flip,

Nona, Cindi, and Shannon

Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did
ProPublica

It is no easy task to bring data to life—especially when the state has stopped collecting it. But Andrea Suozzo, Sophie Chou, and Lizzie Presser did exactly that in this essential investigative series, which revealed the extent to which Texas’s abortion ban has increased rates of sepsis and, in some cases, killed women.

Palestinian Activist Mahmoud Khalil, SIPA ’24, Detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Lawyer Says
Columbia Spectator

One of the biggest stories of this year—the arrest and attempted deportation of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil—was broken in March by an all-woman team of students at the Columbia Spectator. Tsehai Alfred, Surina Venkat, Daksha Pillai, Miranda Lu, and Aiyana St. Hilaire not only were the first to report Khalil’s wrongful arrest, they also took their university to task for being complicit in it.

The Eyes of Gaza
Plestia Alaqad

A MURAL OF ALAQAD IN LONDON (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

Like many young Palestinian journalists, Plestia Alaqad has spent nearly three years observing, reporting on, and surviving unimaginable destruction. In 2025, she turned her diaries into a book, covering, among other things, what it was like to finally have global attention: “It would seem that the eyes and ears of the world aren’t interested in Palestinian life, only in Palestinian death.”

AI Therapy Bots Are Conducting ‘Illegal Behavior,’ Digital Rights Organizations Say
404 Media

AI slop has been out of control this year. In June, as Samantha Cole reported, several organizations filed an FTC complaint against Meta and Character.AI’s therapy-themed chatbots—charging, among other things, that some users were led to believe they were speaking to licensed therapists. Cole’s reporting is informed, but always accessible: It’s nice to get to the end of something as complex as AI and FTC violations and feel like you actually understood everything. In fact, it was so clear that this summer, a group of U.S. senators, citing 404 Media’s reporting, sent a letter to Meta urging a review of its AI practices.

Yousra Elbagir’s Reporting from Sudan
Sky News

Broadcast journalist Yousra Elbagir is one of the few women chronicling the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, the war in Sudan. Millions have been displaced, including Elbagir’s own family. In May, for a reporting trip, she returned to her home, which had been ransacked and looted by paramilitary fighters. “The sight was impossible to process,” Elbagir wrote.

Why the Far-Right Chose Riley Gaines for the Trans Sports Debate
Uncloseted Media 

If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring, John Oliver once said. If you want to loudly do something evil, hire a blonde—for instance, Riley Gaines, a swimmer turned anti-trans commentator. In this piece, Uncloseted Media’s Hope Pisoni (a non-evil blonde) traces the way Gaines’ meteoric rise relies on a long-running strategy of propping up young cisgender white women who have lost to trans women athletes. Pisoni’s analysis provides a clear answer to an infuriating question: How does the right keep winning these battles?

Atlanta’s Strip Clubs Make Millions. Advocates Warn They May Also Fuel Human Trafficking
Capital B News

Bethonie Butler’s deep dive into Atlanta’s strip club scene exposed the dark underbelly of a cultural touchstone—and how the glamorization of that culture led many to see clubs as places of sexual empowerment, allowing trafficking to go wildly unchecked.

WIRED’s Unbelievably Extensive Reporting on DOGE
WIRED

Under the leadership of editorial director Katie Drummond and senior editor Leah Feiger, WIRED gave us scoop after scoop this year about what exactly Elon Musk and his lackeys were doing (and breaking) with the Department of Government Efficiency. WIRED’s reporters talked to more than 200 federal workers, and Vittoria Elliott broke numerous key stories, including how Edward “Big Balls” Coristine gained access to several highly sensitive government systems.

The Ferociously Talented Marianne Jean-Baptiste
Harper’s Bazaar

THE ICONIC MARIANNE JEAN-BAPTISE AT THE 2025 BAFTAS (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

They say art gets better during political turmoil, and that extends to arts reporting. Kaitlyn Greenidge goes above and beyond in her buoyant profile of actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste, where the two explore the history of Black female rage on screen, and what it means, after years of grappling with the “angry Black woman” trope, to finally let loose.

‘What will Jesus say?’ Tony Blair, Big Tech, and the Israel Connection
The Nerve

As part of his so-called peace plan for Gaza, Donald Trump suggested former British Prime Minister Tony Blair could govern the enclave. Longtime investigative badass Carole Cadwalladr revealed the tangled web of lies, Israeli funding, and media billionaires behind the announcement.

At Home with Bad Bunny
i-D

Suzy Exposito marks un año inolvidable.

And a few special shoutouts to other JWAs (journalists with attitude): 

Sharyn Alfonsi, the CBS correspondent whose painstakingly fact-checked segment on the El Salvadoran prison CECOT was pulled at the last minute by new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss—reportedly, Alfonsi charged, because the Trump administration had declined comment. If the new standard is “the government must agree to be interviewed,” Alfonsi wrote in an internal memo, then CBS goes “from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.”

Mary Bruce, the chief White House correspondent for ABC News, who, in a press briefing with Trump and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, asked Salman about the 2018 killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Undeterred by Trump, who berated her for asking “a horrible, insubordinate, and just a terrible question,” she followed up by asking him why he hadn’t released the Epstein files.

And speaking of Jeffrey Epstein, one of the biggest stories this year—the still-unfolding saga of the files—would not have been possible without Miami Herald investigative journalist Julie K. Brown’s relentless digging almost a decade ago. Brown’s series reopened the cold case against Epstein and identified nearly 80 victims, directly leading to Epstein’s arrest. “There is nothing that was more powerful,” Brown told NPR in 2021, “than the words of the women talking about this themselves.”

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