Business, labor stories among Polk winners

Stories about business and labor were among the winners of the George Polk Awards for 2008 announced on Monday.

Robert McFadden of the New York Times writes, “The award for labor reporting went to Paul Pringle of The Los Angeles Times for disclosing that the Los Angeles chapter of the Service Employees International Union, representing 160,000 mostly low-wage workers, and a related charity, had paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to companies owned by relatives of the local’s president, who was removed from office amid state and federal investigations.”

“Richard Behar, an investigative journalist, won the award for magazine reporting for “China Storms Africa,â€? which appeared in the business publication Fast Company. The article detailed China’s drive to invest in sub-Saharan Africa to acquire raw materials for manufacturing.

“The television reporting award went to Scott Pelley, correspondent; Solly Granatstein, producer; and Nicole Young, co-producer, of CBS News for ‘The Wasteland,’ a segment on ’60 Minutes’ that revealed how American companies that had been paid to recycle electronic waste had dumped it in China, leading to health and environmental perils.

“The award for radio reporting went to Alex Blumberg, a producer of ‘This American Life‘ for Chicago Public Radio, and Adam Davidson, a business correspondent for National Public Radio, for their report, ‘The Giant Pool of Money,’ which distilled the complex subprime mortgage crisis through the stories of brokers, packagers and those who lost homes.”

Read more here.