Finalist: The Boston Globe, by Jenna Russell, Maria Cramer, Michael Rezendes, Todd Wallack and Scott Helman

Jenna Russell is a reporter at the Boston Globe and a member of the Globe's investigative Spotlight Team. Her recent work on the Spotlight series "The Desperate and the Dead" documented failures of the state's mental health care system and found that nearly half of shootings by police in Massachusetts - 48 percent - involved a person suffering a mental health crisis.

A longtime projects reporter for the Globe, Jenna produced the three-part series "Brave and Afraid", about one family's struggle to find mental health care for their son, in 2014. The project was recognized as a finalist for the Taylor Award for Fairness in Journalism, awarded by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University. Previously, her reporting on the long-term effects of childhood bulling won a 2011 Dart Award, for excellence in coverage of trauma, from Columbia Journalism School. Jenna also worked on “68 Blocks: Life, Death, Hope,” the Globe's groundbreaking 2012 multimedia series based on a year-long immersion in one of Boston’s most violent neighborhoods, which won first place for journalistic innovation at the National Headliner Awards.

She is a co-author of two Globe books: Last Lion, a 2009 biography of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, and Long Mile Home, about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Maria Cramer is a crime and courts reporter who has worked at the Boston Globe since 2004. She has covered overtime abuses by the Boston Police and broken stories on high profile crime stories, like the Craigslist killer, Clark Rockefeller and the Woolson Street murders. She was also a lead reporter in an award-winning, five-part series about the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood of Boston. In 2013, she was part of the metro staff that covered the Boston Marathon bombings and would win the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Her 2015 story about a teenager who killed the man who sexually abused him for years will soon be published in the 2017 Best American Newspaper Narratives anthology.

Michael Rezendes is an investigative reporter and political writer for The Boston Globe.

He shared a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for investigating the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, as well as the George Polk award for National Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, and numerous other honors.

Rezendes was the lead reporter on the opening story of the Globe’s series on the Church, revealing that top Catholic officials had veiled the abuses committed by the Rev. John J. Geoghan, a Boston priest who molested more than 100 children in six parishes over three decades. In addition, Rezendes broke the stories about similar cover-ups by Church officials in New York City and Tucson, Arizona.

More recently, Rezendes and the Spotlight Team were 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalists for a series of stories that uncovered corruption in the debt collection industry. “Debtors’ Hell” won the Public Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize.

Over the last ten years, Rezendes has played a key role in many of the Globe’s most significant investigations, including those probing the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, financial corruption in the nation’s charitable foundations, and the plight of mentally ill state prisoners.

A staff writer and editor at the Globe since 1989, Rezendes has covered presidential, state, and local politics. He was also a weekly essayist, roving national correspondent, city hall bureau chief, and the deputy editor for national news.

Before arriving at the Globe, Rezendes was a staff writer at The Washington Post and a government and politics reporter for the San Jose Mercury News and the Boston Phoenix. He was also a contributing writer at Boston Magazine and the editor of the East Boston Community News.

Rezendes is a co-author of Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, and a contributing author of Sin Against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church. In 2008 and 2009, he was a recipient of a John S. Knight journalism fellowship at Stanford University.

Rezendes graduated from Boston University and received an MFA from the American Film Institute. He can be reached at [email protected].

Todd Wallack is an investigative reporter for the Boston Globe's Spotlight team, where he specializes in data reporting. He won national awards in 2016 from the Scripps Howard Foundation and the Society of Professional Journalists for his work on public records. Wallack was also a nominated finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting in 2013 and was part of a team that was a nominated finalist for public service in 2015. Prior to joining the Globe in 2007, he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Herald, Dayton (Ohio) Daily News and other publications. He has a bachelor's and master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

Scott Helman has been a staff writer and editor at The Boston Globe since 2000. He is also co-author of two books, The Real Romney and Long Mile Home: Boston Under Attack, the City's Courageous Recovery, and the Epic Hunt for Justice.