Finalist: USA Today , by Tom Frank
For his sharply focused exploration of inflated pensions for state and local employees, enhancing stories with graphic material to show how state legislators pump up retirement benefits in creative but unconscionable ways.
Winners
Prize Winner in Explanatory Reporting in 2012:
David Kocieniewski
For his lucid series that penetrated a legal thicket to explain how the nation's wealthiest citizens and corporations often exploited loopholes and avoided taxes.
Explanatory Reporting
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Explanatory Reporting in 2012:
The Wall Street Journal Staff
For its tenacious exploration of how personal information is harvested from the cellphones and computers of unsuspecting Americans by corporations and public officials in a largely unmonitored realm of modern life.
The Jury
The Jury
Louise Kiernan(Chair )
associate professor, Medill School of Journalism
Anne Hull*
national reporter
Aminda Marques Gonzalez
editor
Paul J. Ingrassia*
deputy editor in chief
Thomas Kennedy
Alexia Chair Professor of Documentary Photography
Maribel Perez Wadsworth
digital news executive
Tracy Weber
senior reporter
Winners in Explanatory Reporting
Mark Johnson, Kathleen Gallagher, Gary Porter, Lou Saldivar and Alison Sherwood
For their lucid examination of an epic effort to use genetic technology to save a 4-year-old boy imperiled by a mysterious disease, told with words, graphics, videos and other images.
Michael Moss and members of the Staff
For relentless reporting on contaminated hamburger and other food safety issues that, in print and online, spotlighted defects in federal regulation and led to improved practices. (Moved by the Board from the Investigative Reporting category.)
Bettina Boxall and Julie Cart
For their fresh and painstaking exploration into the cost and effectiveness of attempts to combat the growing menace of wildfires across the western United States.
Amy Harmon
For her striking examination of the dilemmas and ethical issues that accompany DNA testing, using human stories to sharpen her reports.
2012 Prize Winners
No award
No award
Manning Marable
An exploration of the legendary life and provocative views of one of the most significant African-Americans in U.S. history, a work that separates fact from fiction and blends the heroic and tragic.
John Lewis Gaddis
An engaging portrait of a globetrotting diplomat whose complicated life was interwoven with the Cold War and America's emergence as the world's dominant power.
Tracy K. Smith
A collection of bold, skillful poems, taking readers into the universe and moving them to an authentic mix of joy and pain.