2024 Dao Prize for Excellence in Multimedia Journalism

Tom Fox won the 2024 Best Multimedia Reporting Dao Prize with Claire Ballor, Sharon Grigsby, and Maggie Prosser for The Dallas Morning News for 30 days’ worth of stories exposing the full scope and reality of the fentanyl epidemic gripping north Texas. They received $10,000 for their reporting.

As a photojournalist, Tom Fox has spent over 30 years experiencing the lives of others and sharing their stories with his camera. Every day is different, bringing to it a new dimension and sense of creativity.

Tom was part of a small team of photographers at The Dallas Morning News who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography for coverage of Hurricane Katrina. In 2020, Tom was also named a Pulitzer Prize finalist for breaking news photography for his images of a gunman opening fire on a federal courthouse in downtown Dallas.

A native Minnesotan, Tom settled in Texas where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas – Arlington. He also worked as a staff photographer for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and photo editor/chief photographer for The Arlington Morning News before returning to The Dallas Morning News.

Here are some of their reports on the fentanyl epidemic:

Tears and heartache in Denton’s 158th District Court, Claire Ballor and Tom Fox, September 18, 2023

Code Two: Inside the fentanyl fight at one North Texas school, Maggie Prosser, September 14, 2023

Fentanyl’s blessing and ruin: Inside a 12-hour shift at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital, Sharon Grigsby, Claire Ballor, Tom Fox, and Juan Figueroa, September 25, 2023

The pull of fentanyl was stronger than everything else, until the baby came, Claire Ballor and Tom Fox, September 30, 2023

‘Something of hers’: North Texas mom copes with grief after daughter’s fentanyl poisoning, Maggie Prosser and Tom Fox, September 29, 2023