IRE Winners Include Reporters at N.J. and Mississippi Papers

By: E&P Staff Stories about an environmental disaster in New Jersey and deceit in Cleveland's public-school district won the top prizes in the 2005 IRE Awards, Investigative Reporters and Editors announced today.

Reporters Jan Barry, Mary Jo Layton, Alex Nussbaum, Tom Troncone, Barbara Williams, and Lindy Washburn of The Record in Hackensack, N.J., won for documenting the Ford Motor Co.'s dumping of toxic sludge into a large area populated mostly by low-income people. "This work stood out not only for its exhaustive reporting and clear writing," the judges said, "but for its riveting multimedia presentation."

Winners of the other top prize were journalists at WJW-Cleveland for exposing millions of dollars in waste, mismanagement, and cover-up in the Cleveland Municipal School District.

Among the other winners of the IRE contest, which drew 563 entries this year:

The Tom Renner Medal for Outstanding Crime Reporting went to Jerry Mitchell, of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., who has pursued justice in Civil Rights-era killings for 17 years. In 2005, his work resulted in a conviction of a Klan leader in the case involving the slaying of three civil rights workers.

The Freedom of Information award went to Small Newspaper Group statehouse reporter Scott Reeder, who filed 1,500 Freedom of Information Act requests with almost 900 government agencies in Illinois to report his series, "The Hidden Costs of Tenure."

Among the IRE certificate winners:

Scott Higham and Robert O'Harrow Jr. of The Washington Post for "High Price of Homeland Security." They found evidence that the Department of Homeland Security misspent billions of dollars because of lax financial controls, outmoded technologies, inexperienced contractors, and political influence.

Sally Kestin, Megan O'Matz, John Maines, and Jon Burstein of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale for "FEMA: A Legacy of Waste." They found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to people who were unscathed by storms, wildfires, or earthquakes.

Scott Finn of the Charleston (W.V.) Gazette for "Brother's Keeper: West Virginia's Mental Health Crisis." He documented the devastating effects of budget cuts, bureaucratic bungling, and fraud on the state's mentally ill residents. As a result, West Virginia passed reform laws and restored funding for mental-health services.

Nigel Jaquiss of Willamette Week in Oregon for reporting that stopped secret plans by a Texas buyout firm to strip down Oregon's largest public utility and sell the remainder for a huge profit.

J. David McSwane of Arvada, Colo., for the "Army of Anyone" collection of three stories. Working for his high school newspaper, Westwind, when he began his investigation, McSwane went undercover to expose how recruiters desperate to meet their quotas ignored fictional flaws in his personal background. The stories forced the U.S. Army to convene a national stand-down to review recruiting tactics. The third story was published in Westword, a Denver weekly.

Contest entries are screened and judged by IRE members who are working journalists. Stories that include any significant role by a member of the IRE Board of Directors or an IRE contest judge may not be entered in the contest. This represents a sacrifice on the part of the individual -- and often an entire newsroom -- who may have done outstanding investigative work.

For example, this year, board members who work for The Washington Post, The Orange County (Calif.) Register, The Seattle Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Wisconsin State Journal of Madison, and other media outlets meant their home papers were unable to enter the contest.

The IRE Awards will be presented June 17 at the 2006 IRE Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

IRE is a 4,500-member professional and educational organization based at the Missouri School of Journalism.