Jeff Horwitz, an investigative journalist for The Associated Press, is the 2018 recipient of its annual Christopher J. Welles Memorial Prize for path-breaking and persistent reporting on the Paul Manafort saga.
The award is given by the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
The Knight-Bagehot Advisory Board noted how the AP articles were the first to report on Manafort, who was campaign chair for presidential candidate Donald Trump, overseeing an illegal covert lobbying campaign in Washington, D.C. That global enterprise reporting set in motion a chain of subsequent articles, by the AP and others, eventually setting the stage for Manafort’s tax fraud and unregistered foreign agent cases.
“We’re delighted to recognize Jeff’s work, which truly embodies why deeply reported business and financial journalism has been so front and center in covering President Trump and his campaign, as well as his administration,” said Raju Narisetti, director of the Knight-Bagehot program, in a statement. “It also illustrates the vital need to continue to support and enhance robust business journalism practices and skills, at a time when journalism and journalists are under attack.”
The Welles Award honors the memory of Christopher J. Welles, a former director of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship, who was considered “the premier business writer” from the 1960s to the ’80s, for his penetrating accounts of “shenanigans, abuses and downfalls.”
After Horwitz’s work was published one of Manafort’s clients sued the AP, even taking out a full-page ad in The Washington Post to try discredit the reporting. The suit was later dismissed and the AP stories furthered confirmed by documents later used in the Manafort trial.
