Alum Snags Journalism Award

New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda J. Greenhouse ’68 was awarded a plaque and a personalized chair in recognition of “excellence in journalism” at a ceremony last night at the Kennedy School’s John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum.

Greenhouse, who has covered the nation’s highest court for the Times since 1978 and won a 1998 Pulitzer Prize for excellence in beat reporting, was awarded the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence, the most prestigious of several awards given at the gathering.

David Barstow, Lowell Bergman and David Rummel were awarded the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for “Dangerous Business: When Workers Die.” This report for The New York Times and PBS newsmagazine FRONTLINE exposed negligent business safety practices that have led to the deaths of employees.

They beat out five other teams for the $25,000 annual prize honoring journalism that advocates the ethical practice of politics, just and effective governance and the well-reasoned formation of public policy.

In accepting her award, Greenhouse, a Crimson editor during her time as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College, said she had little light to shed on the topic of investigative reporting, but that she was willing to speak on the Supreme Court.

Greenhouse asked her audience, which was primarily composed of journalists, to consider “what should our stance be toward the institutions we cover.”

She said the goal of a reporter should be to sort through the spin surrounding an issue and give readers the necessary information to come to an informed opinion.

Greenhouse said the Supreme Court beat poses unique obstacles to achieving this goal.

“There is no question of losing access because there’s no access to lose in the first place,” she said, citing the fact that the justices neither act as sources nor leak information, which can present a difficulty for reporters.

In the battle to distill the truth from pages of legal text and the spin armies of interested parties, “for a reporter, knowledge is power,” Greenhouse said.

She concluded her brief remarks by reaffirming reporters’ civic duty to bring the truth to readers.

“We must press on and keep in mind those who depend on us and help them make sense of a confusing world,” she said.

Scott L. Althaus, Paul M. Kellstedt and the team of Bill Katovsky and Timothy Carlson rounded out the awards, receiving Goldsmith Book Prizes. According to their official description, the book prize is awarded to an academic or trade book “that best fulfills the objective of improving government through an examination of the intersection between press, politics, and public policy.”

The event was sponsored by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

—Staff writer William C. Marra can be reached at wmarra@fas.harvard.edu.