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Los Angeles Times wins Bingham Prize for “Billions to Spend”

Thursday, March 08, 2012

The Los Angeles Times has won the 2011 Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism for its six-part series “Billions to Spend.” During an 18-month investigation, the paper found that a $5.7 billion program to rebuild Los Angeles’s nine community colleges was plagued with serious problems including mismanagement and reckless spending that wasted tens of millions of dollars and betrayed the public’s trust. The $20,000 Bingham Prize will be presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., on April 19, 2012. Read more »

Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism

The Worth Bingham Prize honors investigative reporting of stories of national significance where the public interest is being ill-served.

These stories may involve state, local or national government, lobbyists or the press itself wherever there exists an "atmosphere of easy tolerance" that Worth Bingham himself once described in his reporting on the nation's capital.

The investigative reporting may cover actual violations of the law, rule or code; lax or ineffective administration or enforcement; or activities which create conflicts of interest, entail excessive secrecy or otherwise raise questions of propriety.

Judges will be guided by such factors as obstacles overcome in getting information, accuracy, clarity of analysis and writing style, magnitude of the situation, and impact on the public, including any reforms that may have resulted.

The prize for 2011 reporting will be $20,000, which will be presented at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. in April 2012.