Free Press writers win Bingham prize

Staff writers Jim Schaefer and M.L. Elrick and their colleagues at the Detroit Free Press are winners of the 2008 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism for their comprehensive series “A Mayor in Crisis.”

During their yearlong investigation, the reporters chronicled in detail the lies, false testimony and insider dealings that led to the downfall of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his top aide Christine Beatty, who together attempted to bury a lawsuit settlement that threatened to expose their romantic affair.

The Bingham Prize will be presented at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., on March 5, 2009. The Nieman Foundation is the new administrator of the prize and will present the $20,000 award for the first time this year. Previously, the prize was presented during the National Press Foundation’s annual awards dinner in Washington.

For the 2008 prize year, honorable mention goes to The Seattle Times’ Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry for their four-part series “Victory and Ruins,” which showed how a community’s blind loyalty to the celebrated University of Washington football team, which won the 2001 Rose Bowl, compromised judges, prosecutors, police agencies, the university itself and the media. The Rose Bowl team included at least two dozen players who were arrested during their time at UW, some for violent felonies. Armstrong was a 2001 Nieman Fellow.

Click on the headline to read the full story on the Nieman Foundation website.