2010 Awards

The 2010 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting has been awarded to Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for “Cashing In on Kids.” The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy administers the award, which was presented by Bradlee Professor of Government Thomas E. Patterson. In Rutledge’s year-long series covering Wisconsin’s child-care program, she exposed a system plagued by fraud, deceit and criminal activity that cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and repeatedly put children in danger. Her reporting led to criminal probes and indictments and prompted lawmakers to pass new laws aimed at eliminating fraud and keeping criminals out of the day care business.

The Goldsmith Book Prize is awarded to the best academic and best trade books that seek to improve the quality of government or politics through an examination of press and politics in the formation of public policy. The 2010 Goldsmith prize for best academic book was awarded to Matthew Hindman for The Myth of Digital Democracy. The prize for best trade book went to John Maxwell Hamilton for Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting.

The winner of the 2010 Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism is David Fanning, executive producer of PBS’s Frontline since its debut in 1983.