WSJ reporters win NPF’s Dirksen award

James V. Grimaldi and Michelle Hackman

Wall Street Journal reporters James V. Grimaldi and Michelle Hackman have won the 2017 Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress.

Hackman and Grimaldi will receive the honor at the National Press Foundation’s annual journalism awards dinner on Feb. 15, 2018.

The NPF judges said: “Their investigation revealed that Rep. Tom Price, then the nominee to be HHS secretary, had traded in health stocks while pushing legislation that could affect those stocks. Reverberations from their story dominated Price’s confirmation hearings and effectively put him in the crosshairs during his brief tenure at HHS.”

The Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress was created in 1980 in honor of the late Republican senator from Illinois.

The award is intended to recognize U.S.-based journalists whose work shows thoughtful appraisal and insight into the workings of the U.S. Congress and represents the highest standards of journalism.

The National Press Foundation is an independent nonprofit that is run by and for journalists.

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.