R. Jeffrey Smith, Patrick Malone, Chris Zubak-Skees and Peter Cary with the “Center for Public Integrity,” have won an Honorable Mention for the 31st annual Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense. The award recognizes journalists whose high standards for accuracy and substance help foster a better public understanding of National Defense.
Honorable Mention for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense in 2017 – R. Jeffrey Smith, Patrick Malone, Chris Zubak-Skees, and Peter Cary (The Center for Public Integrity)
This year, the award will be presented by Michael Ford, son of the late President Gerald R. Ford and Chairman of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, at the Foundation’s Annual Dinner on Monday, June 4, 2018, at The Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C.
When announcing their decision to award R. Jeffrey Smith, Patrick Malone, Chris Zubak-Skees, and Peter Cary the Honorable Mention for Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense in 2017, the judges issued the following statement:
“The judging panel chose the Center for Public Integrity and the team of R. Jeffrey Smith, Patrick Malone, Chris Zubak-Skees and Peter Cary, for Honorable Mention. Their painstaking investigative journalism into continuing problems in the nuclear weapons production complex exposed not only health and safety concerns, but defense readiness issues. The judges believe that as pressure continues to grow in the reporting industry for shorter attention-grabbing articles, journalistic non-profits like the Center for Public Integrity play an increasingly important role in nurturing the patient reporting, shoe leather sourcing, and in-depth analysis required to produce substantive investigative stories.”
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation sponsors the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prizes for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency and Distinguished Reporting on National Defense to recognize and encourage thoughtful, insightful, and enterprising work by journalists covering the presidency and national defense. The Foundation is a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation whose programs are supported entirely by contributions and bequests in an effort to honor President Ford’s sustained commitment to public service.
This year’s honorable mentions:
R. Jeffrey Smith is the Managing Editor for National Security at the Center for Public Integrity. He was previously a National Investigative Correspondent and National Investigative Editor at The Washington Post, as well as the newspaper’s Bureau Chief in Rome and its National Security Correspondent. Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 2006, along with two colleagues at the Post, for articles on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He was also a finalist with other Post reporters for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 1999 (from Kosovo) and a finalist with others for the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting in 2005 (about Abu Ghraib and military prisoner abuse). In 2006, he and two other Post reporters received the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting and the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting. That year he was also a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. In 1986, he received the National Magazine Award for Public Interest from the American Society of Magazine Editors, for writing about arms control.
Patrick Malone joined the Center for Public Integrity in May 2015 to cover national security. He spent 20 years reporting on justice, politics and deep investigations for newspapers in Colorado and New Mexico, including The Santa Fe New Mexican. The Associated Press Media Editors recognized his work with an honorable mention in the public service category of its national Journalism Excellence Awards for reporting that uncloaked secrets behind a radiation accident caused by Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2014. Malone also received a national award for health care policy reporting from the Association of Health Care Journalists for an expose in 2014 that revealed how hospitals leverage inflated consumer health care costs into tax breaks. He has also received dozens of regional journalism awards.
Chris Zubak-Skees is Data Editor at the Center for Public Integrity, working at the intersection of media, technology, and design. Projects he contributed to having won Loeb, Goldsmith, and Philip Meyer awards, as well as honors from the Society for News Design. A graduate from Rochester Institute of Technology with a journalism and computer science education, he previously served as a reporting fellow at the Sunlight Foundation.
Peter Cary was a consulting reporter in the national security unit at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. He is a former investigative reporter and editor at U.S. News & World Report and finished his career there as the managing editor. Cary’s projects have won numerous awards, including first prizes from the Overseas Press Club, and the Sigma Delta Chi award for Best Magazine Story of the year. Also, under his supervision, USNews.com won a National Magazine Award in 2001 for “best magazine website.”
For more information about the annual prize or previous winners contact:
Joe Calvaruso, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
303 Pearl Street NW
Grand Rapids, MI 49504-5353
(616) 254-0397, jcalvaruso@38foundation.org
Or visit our website at www.geraldrfordfoundation.org
