USC’s Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism this year tapped Voice of OC Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Norberto Santana, Jr. as a first-time judge for the the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting.
The national contest, which offers a $50,000 prize, was established with the support of Southern California businessman and philanthropist Selden Ring with the aim of underscoring the critical importance of investigative journalism in today’s society.
Santana joined a 7-member panel of judges examining 74 national entries submitted from investigative newsrooms from across the world.
In past years, Santana also has been a national judge for the annual award from Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE).
This year’s Selden Ring Award panel included returning judges Alexandra “Alex” Zayas, deputy managing editor, ProPublica; Sarah Stillman, staff writer, The New Yorker and Sewell Chan, editor-in-chief, The Texas Tribune; with three other first-time judges Kimbriell Kelly, former assistant managing editor and Washington Bureau Chief, Los Angeles Times; Ken Bensinger, politics reporter, The New York Times and Geoffrey King, executive editor, Open Vallejo.
Judges selected ProPublica’s “Friends of the Court” series about the ethical conflicts involving Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as the winner along with two finalists and a special citation.
“We are incredibly grateful for the excellent work of our judging panel,” said Gordon Stables, director of USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism.
“At a moment of so much turmoil with news organizations, it is incredibly heartening to see some of the best reporters and editors devoting their time to recognize and elevate the work of their peers. They took on an incredibly challenging task of narrowing down a highly competitive collection of 74 entries representing the very best of impactful investigative journalism over the last year.”
Judges collectively agreed that anyone doubting the impact of journalism today should read the dozens of entries submitted for the Selden Ring Award.
“From a local paper’s outsized effort to prevent the sudden deaths of high school football players, to a large-scale collaboration exploring unjust prosecutions of pregnant women, to the comprehensive accounting of the deaths of assisted-living residents who wandered away, to a jaw-dropping exposé of unfettered sheriffs and their violent deputies, journalists stepped in where guardrails had failed,” the judges wrote in a statement. “They exposed wrongdoing by energy companies, medical device makers, health insurers and officials from the island nation of Cyprus to the California city of Vallejo. Their findings resounded across the world, prompting new policies and indictments, government investigations and class-action lawsuits. We have no doubt that because of tremendous work done last year, lives will be saved.”