Categories: OLD Media Moves

Bloomberg News, Seattle Times win Polk Awards for business journalism

Bloomberg News and the Seattle Times received George Polk Awards in business journalism categories on Wednesday.

The award for financial reporting goes to Noah BuhayerCaleb Melby and David Kocieniewski of Bloomberg News for groundbreaking stories on how wealthy, well-connected individuals perverted the stated intention of “opportunity zone” incentives in the 2017 federal tax code for their own profit.

The program was aimed at spurring economic growth in depressed areas, but some developers reaped tax breaks by using it for such high-end projects as a long-planned $4 billion luxury North Miami development and the construction of a Ritz-Carlton hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon.

Dominic GatesMike Baker, Steve Militech and Lewis Kamb of The Seattle Timesare honored in the business reporting category for first exposing the cooperative arrangements between Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration that led to approval of design changes in 737 Max jets blamed for two crashes, killing 346.

Times reporters traced FAA approval of the flawed flight control system to its decision to defer to Boeing’s own safety analysis, which they attributed to pressure from leaders of the company and the agency to speed production and avoid adding costs.

Winners of the 2019 awards will be honored at a luncheon ceremony at the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan on Friday, April 3.

See all of the winners here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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