Series on home lending discrimination wins Selden Ring award

Emmanuel Martinez and Aaron Glantz of the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal have won the 2019 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting for their multi-part series “Kept Out,” which uncovered widespread discrimination in home lending throughout the United States.

The annual Selden Ring Award, one of the foremost awards in investigative journalism, has been presented by the USC Annenberg School of Journalism for 30 years.

The $50,000 prize honors work in investigative journalism that leads to direct results.

“At a time when rigorous, ethical, high-impact investigative journalism is more important than ever, USC Annenberg is honored to present this prestigious award,” said USC Annenberg Dean Willow Bay. “We are incredibly proud to have partnered with the Ring Foundation for the past 30 years as we celebrate the power of investigative reporting.”

Fifty years after the Fair Housing Act banned discrimination in mortgage lending, known as redlining, reporters Martinez and Glantz embarked on year-long analysis using both a trove of statistical research and dogged reporting to produce what the Selden Ring judges called “an unassailable indictment of discriminatory lending practices that exist to this day.”

“Martinez and Glantz knew that the home ownership gap between blacks and whites had grown wider than it was during the Jim Crow era,” the judges wrote. “They set out to learn why. Using an unprecedented analysis of 31 million mortgage records, they found that modern-day redlining persisted in 61 metro areas, even when people of color made the same amount of money, took on the same size loan and sought to live in the same neighborhood as their white counterparts.”