The Detroit Press Club Foundation presented its 2007 Wheel Awards for excellence in automotive in journalism at the Automotive Hall of Fame Thursday evening, and the top honor, the Golden Wheel Award, went to reporter Ron French of The Detroit News for his series “The General and The Beast” on health care costs at General Motors Corp.
According to the judges at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, led by Senior Assistant Dean Richard Roth, “This exhaustive examination of health care systems not only showed us GM’s prodigious problems, but also the problems — including nothing less than world economic competitiveness — that all the rest of us in the United States face or could face . . . This series, in a word, is terrific. It should be required reading for anyone running for president.”
The series also won first place in the “Newspaper News Story or Subject- Related Series” category. Earlier this year, it won first place in the “Newspaper Reporting” category in the Michigan Excellence in Journalism Competition, also sponsored by the DPCF.
Read about other winners here.
