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The Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting from the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism comes with a $35,000 prize. Los Angeles Times reporters Ruben Vives and Jeff Gottlieb and other staffers were "hailed for 'Breach of Faith,' which exposed pervasive municipal corruption in the city of Bell, Calif., and detailed exorbitant compensation packages received by city officials. In the Los Angeles suburb of 36,000, city manager Robert Rizzo had received annual compensation of $1.5 million in salary and benefits, the reports showed, with similar pay packages going to the police chief and other city administrators." Times editor Russ Stanton was on the panel of judges.
Other finalists were a team from the Wall Street Journal on business spying on Americans as they use the Internet, Walt Bogdanich of The New York Times for an investigation of oversight on the medial use of radiation, and Daniel Golden, John Hechinger and John Lauerman of Bloomberg News for exposing how for-profit colleges target underprivileged students eligible for federal aid.