Sun-Times reporters earn George Polk Award for Koschman investigation

SHARE Sun-Times reporters earn George Polk Award for Koschman investigation

Three Chicago Sun-Times reporters have been awarded one of the nation’s top honors in journalism for stories that led to the conviction of a nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley in a decade-old killing.

The George Polk Awards in Journalism announced Sunday that its 2014 prize for the nation’s best local reporting will go to reporters Tim Novak, Chris Fusco and Carol Marin.

The Killing of David Koschman: A Sun-Times Investigation

The award recognizes four years of reporting on the 2004 death of 21-year-old David Koschman of Mount Prospect that “sparked the successful prosecution of a 10-year-old Chicago homicide” in which authorities were “reluctant to charge its well-connected perpetrator.”

The stories led to the reopening of the case in 2011, the court-ordered appointment of former U.S. Attorney and Iran-contra prosecutor Dan K. Webb as special prosecutor and Daley nephew Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko’s guilty plea and jailing last year for involuntary manslaughter.

Organizers of the Polk Awards cited the Sun-Times staffers “for dogged investigative reports in the face of considerable resistance by police and prosecutors.”

The prize was one of 14 Polk Awards announced Sunday. Named for a CBS news correspondent killed in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war, they “honor special achievement in journalism. The awards place a premium on investigative and enterprising reporting that gains attention and achieves results.” They are given annually by Long Island University and will be presented April 10 in New York.

Vanecko pleads guilt in Koschman death

The other winners:

• Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times, international reporting, “for revealing that European nations secretly paid the Islamic State tens of millions of dollars to ransom hostages.”

• Rania Abouzeid, foreign reporting, for “an extensive and authoritative account of the rise of the Islamic State published online by Politico Magazine.”

• Adam Nossiter, Norimitsu Onishi, Ben Solomon, Sheri Fink, Helene Cooper and Daniel Berehulak of The New York Times, health reporting, “for early coverage of the scourge of Ebola in West Africa.”

• Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post, national reporting, for “reports on serious security lapses and misconduct by U.S. Secret Service agents and officials.”

• A consortium of 120 journalists from 58 countries and 42 news organizations organized by The Center for Public Integrity, business reporting, “for revealing new ways companies and individuals avoid taxes.”

• The Seattle Times staff, environmental reporting “for linking a mudslide resulting in 43 deaths to corners cut, safeguards disregarded and warnings ignored at the behest of logging companies.”

• Julie K. Brown of The Miami Herald and Michael Schwirtz and Michael Winerip of The New York Times, justice reporting, “for revealing rampant brutalizing of mentally impaired inmates that caused injury and death.

• James Verini of the National Geographic, magazine reporting, “for an 11,000-word report on the Democratic Republic of the Congo that asked, ‘Should the United Nations Wage War to Keep Peace?’ ”

• Dennis Wagner of The Arizona Republic, military reporting, “for exposing how Veterans Administration officials won bonuses based on false wait-time data for treatment of veterans who died awaiting care.”

• Doug Pardue, Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Natalie Caula Hauff of The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., state reporting, “for linking 300 deaths to indifferent response to domestic abuse.”

• Marisa Venegas of Telemundo, John Carlos Frey of The Investigative Fund and Solly Granatstein of The Weather Channel and Efran Films, television reporting, “for documentary reports on 400 deaths of migrants abandoned in the harsh terrain of Brooks County, Texas.”

• Ta-Nehesi Coates of The Atlantic, commentary, ”for a provocative and well documented essay” on reparations.

• Cartoonist Garry Trudeau, career award, for his long-running comic strip “Doonesbury.”

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