Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting
Previous Winners and Finalists
2019 Winner
Dallas Morning News
J. David McSwane and Andrew Chavez
Pain and Profit
2019 Finalists
Alabama Media Group
Connor Sheets
Alabama’s ‘Beach House Sheriff’
The Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and FRONTLINE, PBS
Daffodil Altan, Andrés Cediel, Abbie VanSickle
Trafficked in America
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Barbara Laker, Wendy Ruderman, Dylan Purcell, Jessica Griffin, Garland Potts
Toxic City: Sick Schools
ProPublica
Ginger Thompson, Michael Grabell, Topher Sanders, Melissa Sanchez, Duaa Eldeib, Jodi S. Cohen, Alex Mierjeski, Claire Perlman, Ken Schwencke, Adriana Gallardo, and ProPublica staff
Zero Tolerance
South Bend Tribune and ProPublica
Christian Sheckler, Ken Armstrong
Criminal Justice in Elkhart, Indiana
The Wall Street Journal
Michael Rothfeld, Joe Palazzolo, Nicole Hong, Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Rebecca Ballhaus, Alexandra Berzon, Lukas I. Alpert, Michael Siconolfi, Carmel Lobello, Shelby Holliday, Jarrard Cole, Anthony Galloway, Joel Eastwood
Trump’s Hush Money
Read more about the 2019 Winner and Finalists
Watch the 2019 Awards Ceremony with Marty Baron
2018 Winner
NPR and ProPublica
Nina Martin and Renee Montagne
Lost Mothers
2018 Finalists
Asbury Park Press
Shannon Mullen and Payton Guion
Renter Hell
BuzzFeed News
Melissa Segura
Broken Justice In Chicago
Miami Herald
Carol Marbin Miller, Audra D.S. Burch, Emily Michot, and the Miami Herald digital team
Fight Club: An Investigation into Florida Juvenile Justice
STAT and The Boston Globe
David Armstrong and Evan Allen
The Addiction Trade
The Washington Post
The Washington Post staff
Russia
Special citation:
The New York Times
Emily Steel, Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, Michael S. Schmidt, and New York Times staff
Harassed
Read more about the 2018 finalists and their stories.
Watch the 2018 awards ceremony.
2017 Winner
Mother Jones
Shane Bauer
My Four Months as a Private Prison Guard
2017 Finalists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Carrie Teegardin, Danny Robbins, Ariel Hart, Jeff Ernsthausen, Alan Judd and Johnny Edwards
Doctors & Sex Abuse
Chicago Tribune
Sam Roe, Karisa King and Ray Long
Dangerous Doses
Los Angeles Times
David S. Cloud
California National Guard Enlistment Bonus Scandal
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Josh Salman, Emily Le Coz and Elizabeth Johnson
Bias on the Bench
The Wall Street Journal
John Carreyrou, Christopher Weaver and Michael Siconolfi
The Downfall of Theranos
2016 Winner
The Associated Press
Margie Mason, Robin McDowell, Martha Mendoza, Esther Htusan
“Seafood from Slaves”
2016 Finalists
The Guardian US
Jon Swaine, Oliver Laughland, Jamiles Lartey, Ciara McCarthy, Guardian US interactive
“The Counted”
InsideClimate News
Neela Banerjee, John H. Cushman Jr., David Hasemyer, Lisa Song
“Exxon: The Road Not Taken”
The New York Times
Jessica Silver-Greenberg, Michael Corkery, Robert Gebeloff
“Beware the Fine Print”
Tampa Bay Times
Michael LaForgia, Cara Fitzpatrick, Lisa Gartner
“Failure Factories”
The Washington Post
The Washington Post staff
“Fatal Shooting by Police”
2015 Winner
Miami Herald
Carol Marbin Miller, Audra Burch, Mary Ellen Klas, Emily Michot, Kara Dapena and Lazaro Gamio
“Innocents Lost”
Finalists
The Boston Globe
Thomas Farragher, Jonathan Saltzman, Jenn Abelson, Casey Ross and Todd Wallack
“Shadow Campus”
The Post and Courier
Jennifer Berry Hawes, Natalie Caula Hauff, Doug Pardue and Glenn Smith
“Till Death Do Us Part”
ProPublica and NPR
Justin Elliott, Jesse Eisinger and Laura Sullivan
“The Red Cross’ Secret Disaster”
Reuters
Joan Biskupic, Janet Roberts and John Shiffman
“The Echo Chamber”
The Wall Street Journal
Christopher S. Stewart, Christopher Weaver, John Carreyrou, Tom McGinty, Anna Wilde Mathews, Rob Barry and staff
“Medicare Unmasked”
2014 Winner
The Center for Public Integrity: Chris Hamby, Ronnie Greene, Jim Morris and Chris Zubak-Skees
ABC News: Matthew Mosk, Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz
“Breathless and Burdened: Dying from Black Lung, Buried by Law and Medicine”
Finalists
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ): ICIJ is a project of the Washington, D.C.–based Center for Public Integrity.
“Secrecy for Sale: Inside the Global Offshore Money Maze”
The Investigative Reporting Program (IRP) at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism, The Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), FRONTLINE, Univisión Documentaries, KQED
Andrés Cediel, Bernice Yeung, Lowell Bergman, Lauren Rosenfeld, Grace Rubenstein, Stephanie Mechura and Ariane Wu
“Rape in the Fields/Violación de un Sueño”
The Miami New Times
Tim Elfrink
“Biogenesis: Steroids, Baseball and an Industry Gone Wrong”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Ellen Gabler, Mark Johnson, John Fauber, Allan James Vestal and Kristyna Wentz-Graff
“Deadly Delays”
The Wall Street Journal
Michael M. Phillips
“The Lobotomy Files”
Special Citation:
Reuters
Scot Paltrow and Kelly Carr
“Unaccountable”
2013 Winner
Patricia Callahan, Sam Roe, Michael Hawthorne
Chicago Tribune
“Playing with Fire”
Finalists
Alan Judd, Heather Vogell, John Perry, M.B. Pell
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Cheating Our Children”
Collaboration by the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International, with additional cooperation from members of the Investigative News Network
“State Integrity Investigation”
Jason Felch, Kim Christensen and members of the Los Angeles Times staff
Los Angeles Times
“The Shame of the Boy Scouts”
Charles Duhigg, Keith Bradsher, David Barboza, David Segal and David Kocieniewski
The New York Times
“The iEconomy”
David Barstow
The New York Times
“Wal-Mart Abroad”
2012 Winner
Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan and Chris Hawley
Associated Press
“NYPD Intelligence Division”
Finalists
Brian Ross, Anna Schecter and the ABC News Investigative Team
ABC News 20/20
“Peace Corps: A Trust Betrayed”
Jim Morris, Ronnie Greene, Chris Hamby and Keith Epstein, Center for Public Integrity and
Elizabeth Shogren, Howard Berkes, Sandra Bartlett and Susanne Reber, National Public Radio
“Poisoned Places: Toxic Air, Neglected Communities”
Mark Greenblatt, David Raziq and Keith Tomshe
KHOU-TV (CBS Houston)
“A Matter of Risk: Radiation, Drinking Water, and Deception”
Danny Hakim and Russell Buettner
The New York Times
“Abused and Used”
Dafna Linzer and Jennifer LaFleur
ProPublica (co-published with The Washington Post)
“Presidential Pardons”
Special Citation:
Bradley Keoun, Phil Kuntz, Bob Ivry, Craig Torres, Scott Lanman and Christopher Condon
Bloomberg News
“The Fed’s Trillion-Dollar Secret”
2011 Winner
Las Vegas Sun
Marshall Allen and Alex Richards
“Do No Harm: Hospital Care in Las Vegas”
Finalists
The Los Angeles Times
Jeff Gottlieb, Ruben Vives and The Los Angeles Times Staff
“Breach of Faith”
National Public Radio
Laura Sullivan and Steven Drummond
“Behind the Bail Bond System”
ProPublica: Jesse Eisinger, Jake Bernstein
Planet Money, National Public Radio: Adam Davidson
This American Life, Chicago Public Radio: Ira Glass and Alex Blumberg
“Betting Against the American Dream – The Wall Street Money Machine”
San Jose Mercury News
Karen de Sá
“Sponsored Bills in Sacramento”
The Washington Post
Dana Priest and William Arkin
“Top Secret America”
2010 Winner
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Raquel Rutledge
Cashing In on Kids
Finalists
The Boston Globe
Sean P. Murphy
Gaming the System: Public Pensions the Massachusetts Way
KHOU–TV, Houston, TX
Mark Greenblatt, David Raziq, Keith Tomshe, Robyn Hughes and Chris Henao
Under Fire: Discrimination and Corruption in the Texas National Guard
The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
J. Andrew Curliss and Staff
Executive Privilege: The Perks of Power
ProPublica and The Nation Institute
A.C. Thompson in collaboration with Gordon Russell, Laura Maggi and Brendan McCarthy, The New Orleans Times-Picayune and Tom Jennings, Frontline
Law and Disorder
The Washington Post
Joe Stephens, Lena H. Sun and Lyndsey Layton
Death on the Rails
2009 Winner
The Washington Post
Debbie Cenziper and Sarah Cohen
Forced Out
Finalists
The Charlotte Observer
Ames Alexander, Kerry Hall, Franco Ordonez,
Ted Mellnik and Peter St. Onge
The Cruelest Cuts: The Human Cost of Bringing Poultry to Your Table
The Detroit Free Press
Jim Schaefer, M.L. Elrick and Detroit Free Press Staff
A Mayor in Crisis
The New York Times
David Barstow
Message Machine
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Patricia Sabatini and Len Boselovic
Degree of Influence: Academic Corruption at West Virginia University
ProPublica
Abrahm Lustgarten
Buried Secrets: Is Natural Gas Drilling Endangering U.S. Water Supplies?”
2008 Winner
The Washington Post
Barton Gellman and Jo Becker
“Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency “
Finalists
The Nation
Joshua Kors
“Thanks for Nothing”
The New York Times
Walter Bogdanich and Jake Hooker
“A Toxic Pipeline”
The Palm Beach Post
Tom Dubocq
“Palm Beach County’s Culture of Corruption”
The Salt Lake Tribune
Loretta Tofani
“American Imports, Chinese Deaths”
The Washington Post
Dana Priest and Anne Hull
“The Other Walter Reed”
2007 Winner
The Wall Street Journal
Charles Forelle, James Bandler and Mark Maremont
“Stock Option Abuses”
Finalists
The Boston Globe
Walter V. Robinson, Michael Rezendes, Beth Healy, Francie Latour and Heather Allen
“Debtors’ Hell”
The Los Angeles Times
Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber
“Transplant Patients at Risk”
The Miami Herald
Debbie Cenziper
“House of Lies”
The Seattle Times
Ken Armstrong, Justin Mayo and Steve Miletich
“Your Courts, Their Secrets”
The Washington Post
Dan Morgan, Gilbert M. Gaul and Sarah Cohen
“Harvesting Cash”
2006 Winner
The New York Times
James Risen and Eric Lichtblau
“Domestic Spying”
Finalists
The Blade
Joshua Boak, James Drew, Steve Eder, Christopher D. Kirkpatrick, Jim Tankersley and Mike Wilkinson
“Uncovering ‘Coingate’ ”
The Copley News Service
Marcus Stern and Jerry Kammer
“Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham”
The Los Angeles Times
Evelyn Larrubia, Robin Fields and Jack Leonard
“Guardians for Profit”
The Washington Post
Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi and R. Jeffrey Smith
“The Abramoff Scandal”
The Washington Post
Dana Priest
“The CIA’s Secret War Against Terrorism”
A special citation was also awarded to Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times for “The Genocide in Darfur”
2005 Winner
The New York Times
Diana Henriques
“Captive Clientele”
Finalists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Paul Donsky and Ken Foskett
“Wired for Waste”
The Atlantic Monthly
James Fallows
“Blind into Baghdad”
The Oregonian
Steve Suo and Erin Hoover Barnett
“Unnecessary Epidemic”
The Seattle Times
Ken Armstrong, Florangela Davila and Justin Mayo
“The Empty Promise of an Equal Defense”
WFAA-TV, Dallas, TX
Brett Shipp and Mark Smith
“State of Denial”
A special citation was also awarded to Frontline and the BBC for “Ghosts of Rwanda.”
2004 Winner
The New York Times, Frontline, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
David Barstow, Lowell Bergman, David Rummel and Neil Doherty
“Dangerous Business: When Workers Die”
Finalists
The Dayton Daily News
Russell Carollo and Mei-Ling Hopgood
“Casualties of Peace”
Staff of the Gannett New Jersey Newspaper
“Profiting from Public Service”
The Los Angeles Times
Chuck Neubauer, Richard T. Cooper and Judy Pasterna
“The Senators’ Sons”
The Washington Post
Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
“Big Green”
WTVF-TV, Nashville, TN
Phil Williams and Bryan Staples
“Friends in High Places: Perks of Power”
2003 Winner
The Boston Globe
Matt Carroll, Kevin Cullen, Thomas Farragher, Stephen Kurkjian, Michael Paulson, Sacha Pfeiffer, Michael Rezendes, and Walter V. Robinson
“Crisis in the Catholic Church”
Finalists
The Dayton Daily News
Mike Wagner, Ben Sutherly, Laura Bischoff, Ken McCall, Dal Dempsey and Martha Hild
“Down on the Factory: Cheap Food, Hidden Cost”
The New York Times
David Cay Johnston
“Tax Cheats”
National Public Radio
Steve Inskeep
“Oruzgan Raid”
WFAA-TV, Dallas, TX
Brett Shipp and Mark Smith
“Fake Drugs, Real Lives”
The Wisconsin State Journal
Phil Brinkman, Dee J. Hall and Scott Milfred
“Corruption in the Wisconsin Capitol”
2002 Winner
The Seattle Times
Duff Wilson and David Heath
“Uninformed Consent”
Finalists
Knight Ridder Washington Bureau
Sumana Chatterjee and Susarsan Raghavan
“A Taste of Slavery”
The Los Angeles Times
Bob Drogin, Josh Meyer, Craig Pyes, William C. Rempel and Sebastian Rotella
“Revealing Terrorism”
The Los Angeles Times
David Willman
“The New FDA: Partnership With Deadly Risk”
The Orlando Sentinel
Sean Holton, et al.
“Exposing the Flaws”
The Washington Post
David S. Fallis, Craig Whitlock and April Witt
“A Blue Wall of Silence — False Confessions”
2001 Winner
The Kansas City Star
Karen Dillon
“To Protect and Collect”
Finalists
The Chicago Tribune
Ken Armstrong and Steve Mills
“The Failure of the Death Penalty in Illinois” and “State of Execution: The Death Penalty in Texas”
NBC 5 Chicago (WMAQ-TV)
Renee Ferguson
“Strip-Searched at O’Hare”
The Orange County Register
Mark Katches, William Heisel, Ronald Campbell, Sharon Henry, Michael Goulding, Rebecca Allen and Tracy Wood
“The Body Brokers”
ABC News, World News Tonight
Brian Ross, Rhonda Schwartz, Vic Walter, Jill Rackmill, David Scott, Dawn Goeb, Jud Marvin, Gary Fairman, John Detarzio, Dow Haynor, Stuart Schutzman, Paul Slavin and Paul Friedman
“The Money Trail”
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Andrew Schneider and Carol Smith
“Uncivil Action”
2000 Winner
Time magazine
Donald Barlett and James Steele
“What Corporate Welfare Costs”
Finalists
The Chicago Tribune
Ken Armstrong and Maurice J. Possley
“Trial & Error”
The Associated Press
Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley, Randy Herschaft and Martha Mendoza
“The Bridge at No Gun Ri”
The Toledo Blade
Sam Roe
“Deadly Alliance”
The Boston Globe
Robert Whitaker and Dolores Kong
“Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill”
The Los Angeles Times
David G. Willman
“Rezulin: A Billion-Dollar Killer”
1999 Winner
The Miami Herald
A team of reporters
“Dirty Votes: The Race for Miami Mayor”
Finalists
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
William Allen, Kim Bell, and Andrew Skolnick
“Health Care Behind Bars”
The Baltimore Sun
Will Englund and Gary Cohn
“The Shipbreakers”
The Wall Street Journal
Alix Freedman
“Population Bomb”
The Washington Post
Bart Gellman
“Shell Games: The Search for Iraq’s Hidden Weapons”
Newsweek
Michael Isikoff
“President Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky Scandal”
1998 Winners
The Seattle Times
Duff Wilson
“Fear in the Fields — How Hazardous Wastes Become Fertilizer”
Time magazine
Michael Duffy, Michael Weisskopf and Viveca Novak
“Abuse of Campaign Finance Laws”
Finalists
The Cape Cod Times
Anne Brennan and William A. Mills
“Broken Trust: The Failed Cleanup at the Massachusetts Military Reservation”
The Chicago Sun-Times
Chuck Neubauer and Charles Nicodemus
“Investigation into Chicago City Hall Ethics Abuses”
The New York Times
Martin Gotttlieb, Kurt Eichenwald, Josh Barbanel and Tamar Lewin
“Health Care’s Giant”
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Loretta Tofani and Jeffrey Fleishman
“Inside Tibet: A Country Tortured”
1997 Winner
The Los Angeles Times
Glenn Bunting, Rich Connell, Maggie Farley, Sara Fritz, Evelyn Iritani, Connie Kang, Jim Mann, Alan Miller and Rone Tempest
“Illegal Democratic Campaign Contributions”
Finalists
The Wall Street Journal
Jill Abramson, Helene Cooper, Phil Kuntz, Michael Moss, Glenn Simpson, Peter Waldman and John Wilke
“Foreign Contributions Riddle”
The Times Picayune
Chris Adams
“Of Pain and Gain”
The Kansas City Star
Joe Stephens
“Ill-gotten Gains?”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Elizabeth Marchak
“FAA: Safety Comes Second”
The Boston Globe
Charles Sennott
“Armed for Profit: The Selling of U.S. Weapons”
1996 Winner
The Dayton Daily News
Russell Carollo, Carol Hernandez, Jeff Nesmith,
and Cheryl Reed
“Military Secrets” and “Prisoners on Payroll”
Finalists
The New York Times
Ralph Blumenthal, Adam Bryant, Stephen Engleberg, Douglas Frantz and Matthew Wald
“The FAA, USAir and the ATR Turbo Prop Planes”
The Baltimore Sun
Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson
“Honduras”
The Minneapolis Star Tribune
Sharon Schmickle and Tom Hamburger
“Who Owns the Law? West Publishing and the Courts”
The Sun-Sentinel
Fred Schulte and Jenni Bergal
“Profits from Pain”
1995 Winner
The Miami Herald
Lizette Alvarez and Lisa Getter
“Lost in America: Our Failed Immigration Policy”
Finalists
ABC News, “Day One”
Walt Bogdanich
“Smoke Screen, Parts I and II”
The Dallas Morning News
Susan Feeney and Steve McGonigle
“Voting Rights: The Next Generation”
The Washington Post
Dan Morgan
“How Medicaid Grew”
The Chicago Sun-Times
Charles Neubauer, Mark Brown and Michael Briggs
“The Rostenkowski Investigation”
U.S. News & World Report
Joseph Shapiro, Penny Loeb, Susan Headden, Dave Bowermaster, Andrea Wright and Tom Toch
“Separate and Unequal”
1994 Winner
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Neill Borowski and Gilbert Gaul
“Warehouses of Wealth: The Tax-Free Economy”
Finalists
Scripps Howard News Service
Lisa Hoffman and Andres Schneider
“Home Infusion: Medicine’s New Vein of Gold”
The Washington Post
Athelia Knight
“Murder on Trial”
The Dallas Morning News
Randy Lee Loftis and Craig Flournoy
“Race and Risk: HUD’s $67 Million Plan and Housing Deal”
Scripps Howard News Service
Andrew Schnieder and Peter Brown
“FDIC: Protector Turned Predator”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer
Ted Wendling and Dave Davis
“Lethal Doses: Radiation That Kills”
1993 Winners
The Los Angeles Times
Douglas Frantz and Murray Waas
Series on Iraqgate
The Seattle Times
David Boardman, Susan Gilmore, Eric Nalder, and Eric Pryne,
Series on charges of sexual misconduct against former Senator Brock Adams
