Winner – A collaboration of The New Republic and Type Investigations: Political corruption and the art of the deal
- Contributor – Anjali Kamat
- Judges’ Comments – Anjali Kamat’s fresh and groundbreaking reporting on corrupt practices in Trump Organization real-estate projects in India dove deep into the murky world of Indian politics and business. It emerged with a colorful and compelling tale of a big company tied to Indian politicians and business partners with a long history of lawsuits and investigations that yielded evidence of potential bribery, fraud, intimidation, illegal land acquisition and money laundering — much of which enriched the president of the United States.
Honorable Mention – A collaboration of The Intercept and Type Investigations: FINRA’s black hole
- Contributor – Susan Antilla
- Judges’ Comments – Sexual misconduct on Wall Street doesn’t get a fraction of the attention it does in Hollywood, politics and the tech industry, and closed-door arbitration by the financial industry’s own watchdog is one big reason. The Intercept’s detailed investigation of FINRA, which releases almost no information about its arbitrations, revealed that out of 55,000 complaints it decided over the past 30 years, only 97 involved harassment claims by women, who won just 17 of them. It’s a striking picture of the dysfunction that results when a private justice system tries to regulate sexual misconduct in the workplace.
Honorable Mention – A collaboration of ProPublica Illinois and WBEZ: Driven into debt
- Contributors – Melissa Sanchez, Elliott Ramos, David Eads, Sandhya Kambhampati and WBEZ
- Judges’ Comments – A shocking package with tremendous detail and a great visualization lays out how the city of Chicago raised ticket fees to yield more revenue — but with disastrous effects on the city’s poorer and minority populations. Highlights included compelling personal stories, an interactive graphic based on the city’s entire traffic ticket database and the amazing figure that Chicago residents owe a total of $1.45 billion in ticket debt — many times more than in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, and a burden that often forces people into personal bankruptcy in order to restore their driver licenses.
