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1984 IRE Awards
Return to The IRE Contest

IRE Investigative Reporting Contest

This Year's Winners

Newspapers over 75,000:

Dolly Katz
Detroit Free Press
A series investigating incompetent doctors and the agencies that fail to discipline them

Fred Schulte
Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel
A series on heart surgery deaths at Veterans Administration hospitals

Jon Sawyer and Bill Freivogel
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Stories about General Dynamic Corp., a defense contractor involved in allegations of fraud

Newspapers under 75,000:

Peter Klebnikov
New York City Tribune
Stories about the questionable dealings of John Zaccaro, husband of Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro

Roger Morris and a multi-media team
Santa Fe Reporter
Abuses at a state mental hospital

Mark Vogler
Winter Haven News Chief (Fla.)
A series on child molesters teaching in the public schools

Magazine:

Andrew Decker
ARTNews
A story about how the Austrian government still possesses thousands of art works taken by the Nazis from Holocaust victims

Florence Graves
Common Cause Magazine
A story on government approval of a possibly unsafe sweetener, Nutrasweet

Television, larger markets:

Rick Nelson, Joe Collum, Bob Franklin, Peter Roets and Carrie Glasser
KPRC-TV (Houston)
Two separate series - one on incompetent anesthesiologists who kill patients, another on a scheme to defraud low-income, minority-group homeowners and take away their homes through foreclosures

Pam Zekman, Andy Segal, Sandy Bergo & Jack Murphy
WBBM-TV (Chicago)
A series about the poor performance of the Cook County medical examiner's office

Television, smaller markets:

Steve Eckert
WSMV-TV (Nashville)
A series examining loan fraud within a production credit association that lends money to farmers

Mark Lagerkvist
WZZM-TV (Grand Rapids)
Two related series on the questionable profit-making activities of county sheriffs

Radio:

Harry Beadle
WGST (Atlanta)
Stories about the city council president voting on programs in which he had a financial interest