Los Angeles Times wins Bingham Prize for “Billions to Spend”

March 8, 2012

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Los Angeles Times has won the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism for its six-part series “Billions to Spend.” During an 18-month investigation, the paper found that a $5.7 billion program to rebuild nine community colleges in Los Angeles was plagued with serious problems including mismanagement and reckless spending that wasted tens of millions of dollars and betrayed the public’s trust.

The $20,000 Bingham Prize will be presented by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., on April 19, 2012.

Lead reporters for the Times series were Michael Finnegan and Gale Holland, with assistance from investigative reporter Paul Pringle, data specialists Doug Smith, Sandra Poindexter and Ben Welsh and graphics producer Raul Ranoa. In the course of their investigation, the reporters interviewed more than 200 people and reviewed thousands of pages of documents that included contracts, payrolls, inspection reports and emails.

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