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  Globe Receives Selden Ring Award

Boston Globe
February 25, 2003

Reporters and editors at The Boston Globe have won the 2003 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting for their series of articles revealing that the Archdiocese of Boston routinely hid sexual abuse by Catholic priests.

The $35,000 annual prize recognizes the year's outstanding work in investigative journalism that led to direct results.

The Globe reporting led to a new movement among the laity, passage of a state law requiring clergy to report sexual abuse, grand jury investigations, a revolt among Boston priests against their leadership, a national child-protection policy in the Catholic Church, and ultimately, the resignation of Cardinal Bernard F. Law.

"The impact of The Boston Globe series is huge. There's been nothing like this in a generation," the Ring Award judges wrote. "It brought out the best in the rest of us, spurring a wave of similar newspaper investigations across the country."

Globe editor Martin Baron said, "Globe reporters lived up to the ideals embraced by this award -- the tenacity to cut through deception and get at the truth. We are grateful for this honor and for the especially kind words of the judges."

Two New York Times projects, "Broken Homes" and "Medical Middlemen," were also recognized.

Eighty nominations were submitted. The panel of judges included distinguished print journalists from across the country.

The Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting was established in 1989 by the late Selden Ring, a Southern California business leader and philanthropist. It is administered by the School of Journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.

 
 

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