| | Seattle Times coverage of Boeing’s difficult 2024 takes top reporting award
Oct. 10, 2025 at 11:00 am Updated Oct. 10, 2025 at 11:00 am
A cargo door is craned in before installation on a 777 freighter at the Boeing Everett Production Facility on June 26, 2024 in Everett. (Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times)
By
Levi Pulkkinen
Seattle Times business editor
The Seattle Times team covering two crises facing Boeing in 2024 — a midair blowout aboard a Boeing 737 MAX jet and a historic Machinists strike — was honored Thursday with a Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious honor in American business journalism.
Seattle Times reporters Lauren Rosenblatt, Paige Cornwell and Patrick Malone were recognized, as was longtime Times aerospace reporter Dominic Gates, who retired earlier this year after 22 years with the newspaper. They were honored for beat reporting, tying with The New York Times, which was recognized for its coverage of the succession disputes surrounding the Murdoch family’s media empire.
The five Seattle Times stories submitted for consideration included visual journalism by Seattle Times photographers Jennifer Buchanan and Dean Rutz, and by Seattle Times graphic artist Fiona Martin.
“The Seattle Times has been committed for decades to covering Boeing and the aerospace industry because of its impact on the region’s economy,” Seattle Times Associate Publisher Ryan Blethen said in a statement. “I’m so proud of the journalists named as award recipients, but also acknowledge the many reporters, photojournalists, editors and more that brought the dozens of stories related to this event to readers.”
On Jan. 5, 2024, an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX airliner fresh from Boeing’s factory in Renton suffered a nearly catastrophic failure when a door-shaped panel blew out over Portland, Ore. In the wake of that near-disaster, the reporters uncovered a chain of events stretching into Boeing’s past.
Boeing, until recently the world’s top jet maker, started 2024 confident of a comeback after an existential crisis set off five years earlier by two fatal crashes. The confidence evaporated after the January incident. The blowout precipitated a year of layoffs, plunging profits, congressional hearings and leadership shake-ups. The manufacturer’s troubles intensified that fall, when 33,000 factory workers launched what would prove to be a 53-day strike.
The Loeb Awards were established in 1957 by the late Gerald Loeb, a founding partner of E.F. Hutton, a once-prominent Wall Street brokerage. Loeb hoped to encourage and support reporting on business and finance that would inform and protect the private investor and the general public.
Rosenblatt traveled to New York City to receive the award on behalf of the team at a banquet Thursday.
The Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing honored the coverage earlier in the year, awarding a collection of stories on the 2024 blowout with a prize for transportation coverage. The Seattle Times business coverage was also recognized by SABEW, a business journalism organization, with an honorable mention for general excellence.
Seattle Times reporters received a Loeb Award in 2020 for their coverage exposing a design flaw in the 737 MAX that caused two deadly crashes, and in 2011 and 2002 for investigations, respectively, into Washington’s adult family homes industry and medical experimentation at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
The Seattle Times has been a locally owned, independent news organization for more than 129 years.
Levi Pulkkinen: 206-464-3193 or lpulkkinen@seattletimes.com. Levi Pulkkinen is the business section editor at The Seattle Times, where he leads a team of reporters and editors covering economic life in the region.
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