The crack reporting team of Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman, fresh from winning this year's Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, have hauled in another big award.
The Daily News reporters have been announced as the winners of the Clark Mollenhoff Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting for their series, "Tainted Justice."
The award, given by the Institute on Political Journalism, carries a $5,000 prize. It will be presented June 30 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The "Tainted Justice" series, which exposed rogue narcotics cops in the Philadelphia Police Department, has won numerous other honors in addition to the Pulitzer.
Joe Starrs, director of the Institute on Political Journalism and coordinator of the award, commented: "The work of Ruderman and Laker proves that there is no substitute for good old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting. Young journalists who are looking for role models need look no further than these two reporters."
The award is named after the late Clark Mollenhoff, who won the Pulitzer in 1958 for exposing racketeering and fraud in the Teamsters Union.
Laker has been a Daily News reporter and editor since 1993.
Ruderman came to the Daily News three years ago after working for four years as an Inquirer reporter.
