Henriques Wins Prestigious Polk Award
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Amid names like Seymour Hersh and Diane Sawyer, business journalists from both coasts are taking home the prestigious George Polk Award for excellent economic, labor and military reporting last year.
After winning the Worth Bingham Prize for the 
same story in January, Diana Henriques of The New York Times now earns the Polk military reporting award for her investigative look at financial services firms that scammed young soldiers with inflated life insurance premiums by using connections in the nation's capital. Her coverage sparked state and federal investigations and Congressional hearings.
Repeat Polk winners Ellen E. Schultz and Theo Francis of The Wall Street Journal rack up another economic reporting award for their exposé on how some companies slash health care benefits for retirees to save millions in income for themselves. A few have even taken to suing their unionized retirees to cancel any obligation to pay health care throughout their lifetimes.
Associated Press immigration writer Justin Pritchard wins the Polk award for labor reporting. The California-based reporter wrote “Dying to Work,” an investigation into how the dangerous jobs that brought Mexicans to the U.S. also claims one of their lives a day. Pritchard's stories goaded the Occupational Safety & Health Administration to hold the first Hispanic Safety and Health Summit.
For regional reporting, a team of four reporters and photographer from The (Santa Rosa, Calif.) Press Democrat worked for eight months to produce “Global Shift,” which followed a high-tech company's decision to close a local plant and move hundreds of jobs to Malaysia. Polk officials describe the four-part series as “an ambitious undertaking for a 92,000-circulation daily.”
Launched 55 years ago by Long Island University, the George Polk Award is a tribute to a slain CBS correspondent who was covering the civil war in Greece. It celebrates reporting that protects public interests, and has graced the resumes of such reporting greats as Walter Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Christiane Amanpour and Thomas Friedman. This year's business journalists will pick up their awards on April 20 in New York City.
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