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KCET's weekly news and investigations show SoCal Connected will receive this year's Public Service Award from the Los Angeles Press Club for exposing "lavish and out of control spending at the Los Angeles Housing Authority, the billion-dollar agency that provides housing for the city's poor." The award, to be given at the club's annual banquet in June, will go to correspondent Laurel Erickson, producers Karen Forshay and Rocio Zamora, associate producers Miguel Contreras and Lata Pandya, ditor Alberto Arce and executive producer Bret Marcus.
"This KCET team spent over six months examining HACLA expense reports they had forced the agency to release," says club president Will Lewis. "It was investigative journalism at its best."
This will be the second time the Public Service Award will be handed out. The prize was created last year and given to reporters Jeff Gottlieb and Ruben Vives of the Los Angeles Times for their stories on corruption in the city of Bell.
The press club awards dinner will be back at the Biltmore Hotel again in June. This year the club is also honoring Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein 40 years after their first Watergate stories for the Washington Post, as well as CBS2/KCAL9 investigative reporter David Goldstein.
Previously:
2011 journalists of the year
2010 journalists of the year
2009 Press Club winners