josh strokes his ego

Okay, I’ll stop the self-fellatio someday, but I thought I should mention that on Saturday I won the Fred M. Hechinger Grand Prize for Distinguished Education Reporting, which is the top award in my line of work. (Web site not yet updated.)
This is related to these two awards I wrote about a couple months ago. In the National Awards for Education Reporting, there are a number of categories (feature writing, breaking news, etc.) for a number of different media (newspapers, radio, TV, magazines). I won the top prize in investigative reporting and beat reporting. The Hechinger Grand Prize goes to the best of all the winners in all the categories.
While I’m stroking my ego — a habit I really should get out of — I might as well post a couple of the judges’ comments in the competition: “This is great and sophisticated journalism. They caught the cheaters, exposed them and got the system to change as a result of their stories. It’s some of the best investigative work I’ve ever seen in this contest, and very worthy of [the Education Writers Association]’s highest annual honor.”
And: “The Dallas Morning News team exposed what many may have suspected by few wanted to acknowledge: cheating by teachers to boost test scores. Their exhaustive research and clear, compelling writing has forced state officials to confront a troubling trend…Throat-grabbing work!”
And: “Far and away, this entry is the best of the bunch in the beat reporting category. Joshua Benton gives us a powerful portrait of how AIDS is taking a toll in Zambian schools. We liked his hard-hitting pieces on the worst school district in Texas and his statistical analysis of state test scores, which uncovered widespread cheating.”