Major investigative reports on the nation's methamphetamine epidemic, systemic failures in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the loss of Florida's wetlands were named today as winners of the first Philip Meyer Awards.
The Meyer Awards recognize the best uses of social science methods in journalism. They are administered by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (a joint program of Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Missouri School of Journalism), and the Knight Chair in Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
The awards are in honor of Philip Meyer, the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Meyer is the author of Precision Journalism, the seminal 1973 book (and subsequent editions) that encouraged journalists to incorporate social science methods in the pursuit of better journalism. As a reporter, he also pioneered using survey research for Knight-Ridder newspapers while exploring the causes of race riots in the 1960s.
The winners of the 2005 Meyer Awards are:
First Place:The Oregonian for "Unnecessary Epidemic," a series of articles over the past year showing how Congress and the Drug Enforcement Administration could have stopped the growth of meth abuse by aggressively regulating the import of the chemicals necessary to make it. Lead reporter Steve Suo's work included sophisticated statistical analyses of data on hospital and treatment center admissions, arrests, meth prices and purity, and chemical imports.
Second Place: The Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau for "Discharged and Dishonored," a year-long series of stories that revealed how disabled veterans were being harmed by the bureaucratic inefficiencies of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Reporters Chris Adams and Alison Young analyzed survey data and the VA's own database of 3.4 million claims to discover that more than 13,700 veterans died while waiting for their claims to be resolved, and as many as 572,000 vets may be missing out on their rightful disability payments.
Third Place: The St. Petersburg Times, for "Vanishing Wetlands," which demonstrated that 84,000 acres of Florida wetlands have been destroyed by development since 1990 when President George H. W. Bush declared a national policy of no net loss of wetlands. Reporters Matthew Waite and Craig Pittman penetrated beyond the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' poorly-documented records of development permits by using before-and-after satellite imagery and geographical information systems software to accurately measure the loss.
The awards will be presented March 10 at the IRE and NICAR Computer-Assisted Reporting conference in Newark, N.J. The first-place winner will receive $500; second and third will receive $300 and $200.
The contest, for work published or broadcast between October 2004 and October 2005, attracted more than two dozen entries from across the country in its inaugural year. The judges noted it was extremely difficult to pick winners because so many of the entries demonstrated high quality use of social science methods and data analysis. All entries will be archived in the IRE Resource Center.
The entries included topics such as infant death rates, property tax inequities, bias in jury selection and mortgage lending, cheating in education testing, deaths from high-speed pursuits, disaster relief fraud, and much more. The social science methods used ranged from statistical and geographical analyses of various kinds to survey research to demographic studies.
The contest judges included journalism professors who have extensive experience with computer-assisted reporting techniques and social scientists who are experienced in working with reporters. They were:
Ira Chinoy, professor of journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism, and former director of computer-assisted reporting for The Washington Post
Steve Doig, a member of IRE's Board of Directors and the Knight Chair in Computer-Assisted Reporting at Arizona State University's Cronkite School of Journalism, and formerly associate editor for research at The Miami Herald
William Frey, one of the nation's leading demographers, member of the faculty of the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution
Ken Goldstein, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, director of a major national study of political advertising, and formerly a researcher for the CBS News Election Unit
Cindy Taeuber, a former demographic researcher at the U.S. Census Bureau, now a senior analyst for the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore
The Philip Meyer Journalism Award follows the rules of the IRE Awards in its efforts to avoid conflicts of interest. Work that included any significant role by a member of the IRE Board of Directors or Meyer Award contest judge may not be entered in the contest. This often represents a significant sacrifice on the part of the individual — and sometimes an entire newsroom. The IRE membership appreciates this devotion to the values of the organization.
IRE works to foster excellence in investigative journalism, which is essential to a free society. Founded in 1975, IRE has more than 4,500 members. Headquartered at the Missouri School of Journalism, IRE provides training, resources and a community of support to investigative journalists; promotes high professional standards; and protects the rights of investigative journalists. The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting was founded by the Missouri School of Journalism in 1989 and became a collaboration of the School and IRE in 1994.
