Polk Award for LAT's Bell coverage

The George Polk Award is one that reporters especially like to win. The Los Angeles Times picked up this year's Polk in local reporting for coverage of the corruption in the city of Bell. From the release:

Los Angeles Times reporters Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives and a group of other staff writers revealed that officials in the city of 37,000 had bilked its residents of millions of dollars and secretly enriched themselves, even as they cut services and fired workers. Bell’s city administrator was paid nearly $800,000 a year, and city council members made $100,000 annually for part-time jobs. As a result of the investigative reporting, eight current or former city officials were arrested on corruption charges. The Los Angeles Times stories on Bell also led the state controller’s office to order municipalities to post the salaries of officials on the Internet.

Precursor to a Pulitzer? Quite possibly. Other Polk winners announced by Long Island University include Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone for the piece that led to President Obama’s dismissal of Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Clifford J. Levy and Ellen Barry of The New York Times for coverage of Russia, Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times military reporting, and two collaborations involving ProPublica.