ProPublica Wins Two Investigative Journalism Awards
by Minhee Cho
ProPublica, April 8, 2011, 11:33 a.m.
ProPublica is proud to announce that it is the recipient of two IRE awards honoring the best in investigative journalism. Senior Editor Robin Fields won an IRE certificate in Online Media for her series Dialysis: High Costs and Hidden Perils of a Treatment Guaranteed to All, which examined the disparate dialysis treatment system in the United States—a service that costs taxpayers billions of dollars and yet often provides inferior, damaging care.
Senior Reporters Charlie Ornstein and Tracy Weber, as well as News Applications Developer Dan Nguyen, won the Gannett Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism for their series Dollars for Docs—an investigation that not only reported on the millions of dollars pharmaceutical companies were paying out to medical professionals, but also made the data easily accessible to reporters and to patients across the country. Judges called their entry “Truly innovative, the work represents the best media can do for the public good.”
Newly hired ProPublica Reporter Marshall Allen won in the Newspapers, Circulation 100,000-250,000 category for his co-reported Do No Harm: Hospital Care in Las Vegas series, which appeared in the Las Vegas Sun. The judges noted that the piece led to three new laws being introduced in Nevada.
Several other ProPublica investigations were noted as finalists for this year’s IRE Awards. Jake Bernstein and Jesse Eisinger were finalists in the Partnership/Collaboration category for their Wall Street Money Machine series, which looked at the actions of bankers and hedge funds and their roles in exacerbating the housing market collapse. Our T. Christian Miller and NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling were finalists in the same category for their Brain Wars exploration of soldiers who have traumatic, and often misdiagnosed, brain injuries.
Our Dollars for Docs series was selected as a finalist in the Online category, Fields was a finalist for the IRE’s Freedom of Information Award and Allen was a finalist for the Gannett Innovation Award.
“Judging the IRE awards leaves me with a sense of excitement for our industry. I was bowled over by the depth and breadth of all the entries, and by the change that resulted from fantastic investigative journalism by both small shops and large, in this country and around the world,” said Cheryl Phillips, co-chairwoman of the contest committee.
For a full list of winning entries, visit the IRE site. Congratulations to everyone involved.
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