Davis Winkie awarded top prize by Military Reporters & Editors
WASHINGTON — During its annual conference for journalists, Military Reporters & Editors presented awards to the winners of the 2025 MRE Journalism Contest. Davis Winkie is awarded MRE’s top text media prize – The James Crawley Award for his investigation of suicide in the Army.
Award Summary
“Broken Track” a three-part investigation of suicide, Army Times, published 3/11/2024 – 3/12/2024.
Prize Category: The James Crawley Award, Text journalism published in traditional print or online media.
This is in remembrance of Jim Crawley, a former president and member of MRE. Crawley was the chief military reporter at the San Diego Union-Tribune. He later covered national security and veterans affairs for Media General News Service. This is Military Reporters & Editors top honor chosen specifically by the contest judges from all text media submissions.
Judges’ Comments:
Davis Winkie of Army Times analyzed Army death records to learn that between 2019 and 2021, tank brigades experienced a suicide rate twice as high as the rest of the active duty force; across all unit types, enlisted tankers were three times as likely to die by suicide as other soldiers. The culprit: a high operational tempo away from home for training or deployments. Winkie describes the toll the such a high operational took on the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment in Fort Carson, Colorado. He writes movingly of the disastrous effect of a series of soldiers’ suicides on the whole unit’s mental health, especially the escalating stress levels that go with high operational tempo and long hours working in maintenance bays. While the Army has taken some steps to address the problem, Winkie points to the need for a long-term policy solution to save the tankers’ lives.
Read the Winning Series
- Article 1: BROKEN TRACK: Suicides and suffering in Army’s exhausted armor community, Army Times (3/11/2024)
- Article 2: BROKEN TRACK: How Army Times discovered high tank unit suicide rates, Army Times (3/11/2024)
- Article 2: BROKEN TRACK: Why the Iron Knights chose to speak out about suicides, Army Times (3/12/2024)
Journalist Biography
Davis Winkie
Davis Winkie is an Atlanta- and DC-based reporter who covers the White House, nuclear threats and national security for USA TODAY.
Before joining USA TODAY, Davis was a senior reporter for the independent Military Times family of newsmagazines. As the publication’s top Army beat reporter, Davis led editorial partnerships with The Texas Tribune and ProPublica. His investigative work there led to significant impact: changes in federal law, policy revisions, investigations, senior leader firings and more. He also previously worked as a researcher for CNN’s editorial fact-checking division, The Row, where he fact-checked and verified attribution for TV scripts, features, digital articles and longform projects.
In 2025, Davis received the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. That year Davis also was nominated for the True Story Award and was shortlisted for the Sigma Awards. He also was a finalist for the 2023 Livingston Award for Local Reporting, and he shared the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2023 Sunshine Award with colleagues from ProPublica, The Texas Tribune
and The Marshall Project. Additional professional accolades include back-to-back-to-back Military Reporters & Editors Association honors (2022-2024), back-to-back Atlanta Press Club awards (2023-2024), the Headliners Foundation of Texas’ 2023 Charles E. Green investigative reporting award, and the Institute for Non-Profit News’ 2023 large
newsroom investigative reporting award, among others.
Prior to his career in journalism, Davis was a historian who worked as project archivist for the Atlanta History Center’s oral history collections. He also coordinated a Smithsonian travelling exhibit that went from town-to-town in rural Georgia as a fellow for Georgia Humanities.
Davis has a master’s degree in military history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied how the Defense Department influenced Cold War-era Hollywood war movies. He also holds a graduate certificate in public history from the University of West Georgia, and a bachelor’s degree with dual majors in history and
classics from Vanderbilt University, where he played football.
Davis is also a veteran of the Army National Guard and a part-time officer in the Air National Guard. He received the Theodore Roosevelt Leadership Award for Company Grade Officers from the National Guard Association of the U.S. in 2021.