FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 24, 2007
Contact:
- Brant Houston, IRE Executive Director, 573-882-2042 or brant@ire.org
- Steve Doig, Cronkite School of Journalism, Arizona State University
480-965-0798 or steve.doig@asu.edu
Probes into stocks, hospitals and schools win Meyer Awards
Three major investigative reports that used social science research methods as key parts of their probes were named today as winners of the Philip Meyer Awards.
The Wall Street Journal won top honors for its story on the backdating of stock options. Gannett News Service was recognized for its analysis that rated hospitals on care for heart-attack patients, and a Philadelphia Inquirer investigation of a cheating scandal in New Jersey schools completed the winners list.
The Meyer Awards recognize the best uses of social science methods in journalism. The awards will be presented on March 9 in Cleveland at the 2007 CAR Conference, sponsored by Investigative Reporters and Editors. The first-place winner will receive $500; second and third will receive $300 and $200.
The awards 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.
Here are details on the winners of the 2006 Meyer Awards:
First Place: The Wall Street Journal "Perfect Payday," a series of articles over the past year that exposed the widespread practice of secretly backdating stock option grants to benefit corporate insiders. Lead writers Charles Forelle and James Bandler used a statistical model to calculate the wildly improbable odds that options grant dates would just happen to be so favorably profitable to dozens of executives at some of the nation’s best-known companies. Their stories about the scandal have spurred an ongoing federal securities investigation into rigged options at more than 100 companies to date.
Second Place: Gannett News Service for “Special Report: Rating Hospital Health Care”, an investigative package that rated more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals on how well they followed recommended medical guidelines for treating heart attack and heart failure patients. The stories by database editor Robert Benincasa and reporter Jennifer Brooks showed that patients in poor and rural areas were less likely to receive the recommended care. Their analysis took a national dataset detailing the treatments given to each patient and used a composite scoring methodology to rate each hospital.
Third Place: The Philadelphia Inquirer for “Camden Schools Investigation”, a series of stories that uncovered a cheating scandal in the standardized testing being used by the Camden, NJ, school district. The stories by reporters Melanie Burney, Frank Kummer and Dwight Ott revealed that test scores in several Camden schools were dramatically higher that would be expected based on past performance, and ultimately led to the resignation of the district superintendent, an investigation, and strict monitoring by the state department of education.
The contest included work published or broadcast between October 2005 and October 2006 and attracted entries from across the U.S. and Canada. The stories used a variety of social science methods and data analysis. All entries will be archived in the IRE Resource Center.
The entries included topics such as the effect of parental notification laws on abortion rates, auto insurance rates, the loss of affordable housing, the hidden costs of murder convictions, tracking sex offenders, the deaths of college students, aviation safety, the politics of national disaster declarations, and much more. The use of social science methods ranged from statistical and geographical analyses and modeling of various kinds to survey research and 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. The judges 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, 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 retired demographic researcher for the U.S. Census Bureau.
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 4,000 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.
