Selden Ring prize

Selden Ring was a bigtime Los Angeles-area property developer who happened to believe that investigative reporting was essential to the republic. The annual award his family endowed at USC's Annenberg School honors "journalists whose investigative reporting informed the public about major problems or corruption in society and yielded concrete results." This year's winner of the $35,000 award, announced today, is a team at the Washington Post for their series exposing lead contamination in the District of Columbia water supply and the failure of public officials to inform and protect residents. Finalists were from the Chicago Sun-Times, New York Times and the Seattle Times.