ASNE - Los Angeles Times reporter wins Selden Ring Award

Published Thursday, April 5, 2001

Previous Selden Ring Award winners:

2000
Co-winners: Reporter team, The Philadelphia Inquirer, “The Rape Squad Files”; and Katherine Boo, The Washington Post, for series, “Invisible Lives, Invisible Deaths”

1999
Reporter team, The Washington Post, for series, “Deadly Force: An Investigation of D.C. Police Shootings”

1998
Gary Cohn and Will Englund, The Baltimore Sun, “The Shipbreakers,” exposing a covert international industry

1997
Byron Acohido, The Seattle Times, for series, “Safety At Issue: The 737,” detailing serious problems with the Boeing 737

1996
Ginger Thompson and Gary Cohn, The Baltimore Sun, “Battalion 316,” exposing atrocities committed by a secret Honduran military intelligence unit

1995
Five reporters, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans), for series exposing political influence peddling involving the gambling industry

1994
Eileen Welsome, The Albuquerque Tribune, for disclosing that Americans were used in government radiation experiments without their knowledge

1993
Roy Gutman, Newsday, for exposing widespread murder of Muslims in Bosnia

1992
Reporter team, The Greenville (S.C.) News, for uncovering overspending by officials at the University of South Carolina

1991
Candy Cooper, the San Francisco Examiner, for series showing how the Oakland, Calif., Police Department handled rape cases

1990
Co-winners: Jane Hansen, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for series on abused Georgia children; and a reporter team, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, for investigating questionable financial policies in the Kentucky school system

In 30 years of covering state governments around the country, Los Angeles Times reporter Virginia Ellis has developed a sense of when public officials are up to no good.

She helped uncover a zoning scandal in St. Petersburg, Fla., and payoffs of college football players in Austin, Texas.

And now Ms. Ellis has won the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting after uncovering information that led to the resignation of California’s state insurance commissioner.

Virginia Ellis

“When you’re covering people, you get a sense about (them),” said Ms. Ellis, a native of Stewart, Fla., who has worked for the St. Petersburg Times and the Dallas Times Herald. “I do investigative journalism, but I’m not an investigative reporter. I’m really a beat reporter. If I

Virginia Ellis of the Los Angeles Times won this year’s Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting.

see something that isn’t right, I look into it as part of what I’m supposed to do.”

At the Los Angeles Times’ Sacramento bureau, where she’s been since 1988, she started examining Chuck Quackenbush’s activities after she noticed that “he never really took an action that was adverse to the industry.”

Chuck Quakenbush

Mr. Quackenbush allegedly funneled tens of thousands of dollars from the companies he regulated to pay a debt his wife accumulated after running a failed campaign for state senate, according to Ms. Ellis’ articles.

Ms. Ellis also uncovered what appeared to be a fake nonprofit

Chuck Quackenbush resigned as California insurance commissioner following Virginia Ellis’s reporting of the scandal. Behind him is his attorney, Don Heller. (AP photo)

organization the commissioner started. He allegedly told insurance companies, which owed the state hefty fines for mishandled claims after the Northridge earthquake in 1994, to donate money to his nonprofit organization instead of paying the fines.

The reporter sifted through handwritten notes, e-mails, memos, legal agreements and campaign contribution records and obtained most of Mr. Quackenbush’s personal communications through sources she developed – not through the Freedom of Information Act.

Her investigative stories prompted three legislative committees in California to hold hearings in April 2000. The commissioner was not charged, and he denied any wrongdoing, calling the hearings a waste of tax dollars. The state’s attorney general began a criminal investigation of Mr. Quackenbush, who resigned July 10, 2000, three months after Ms. Ellis wrote her first story on the scandal. He moved to Hawaii with his family a few days after he resigned, she said.

George Grays, Mr. Quackenbush’s deputy, has pleaded guilty to three felony counts of mail fraud and money laundering for accepting $170,000 in kickbacks, she said. The state attorney general has enlisted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney’s office in its ongoing investigation.

“She’s a classic state house reporter who holds politicians accountable,” said Michael Parks, interim director of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Journalism, which presents the award. “She works very, very hard at building sources.”

Mr. Parks, who was also editor of the Los Angeles Times when Ms. Ellis’ stories were first published, took part in judging the 106 entries but recused himself from the contest’s final vote.

Selden Ring, a late Southern California business leader, established the award in 1989. Mr. Parks said Mr. Ring was inspired to create such an award by the investigative journalism that uncovered the Watergate scandal. Ms. Ellis will receive a $25,000 prize for winning the Selden Ring Award.

The contest is open to staff and free-lance reporters for newspapers, magazines and wire services in the United States. The primary requirement for the award is that the work leads to some sort of resolution or change in the subject it covers.

Long Island University in New York also recognized Ms. Ellis’ work by giving her the George Polk Award for investigative journalism last month.
Los Angeles Times reporter wins Selden Ring Award