| Hillman Foundation
October 16, 2015

Sidney’s Picks: Bernie and the Drug Baron; Wage Theft in the Big Apple

Photo credit: 

Randy Bayne, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

 

October 14, 2015

ProPublica and AL.com share October Sidney for "Take a Valium, Lose Your Kid, Go to Jail" Series

Photo credit: 

Grant Blankenship for ProPublica.

Nina Martin of ProPublica and Amy Yurkanin of AL.com win the October Sidney Award for exposing Alabama’s attempt to twist an anti-meth-lab law to punish women for using drugs during pregnancy. The arrests of hundreds of new mothers combine the worst excesses of the War on Drugs with the anti-abortion movement’s “personhood” agenda. 

Find out how this remarkable piece of investigative journalism came to be in an interview we call The Backstory, with Lindsay Beyerstein. 

October 9, 2015

Sidney’s Picks: Elephants, Planned Parenthood, and the Nobel Prize

Photo credit: 

Diana Robinson, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

  • “Wal-Mart is the embodiment of our broken economic system,” says AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka. 
     
  • New York City teacher speaks out against the burden of standardized testing.
     
  • GOP probe of Planned Parenthood finds no evidence of wrong-doing. 
     
  • A newly-discovered gene accounts for elephants’ enviably low cancer rates.
     
  • A Russian journalist who chronicled Chernobyl wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
October 2, 2015

Sidney’s Picks: The Oregon Killer, Captain America, and the Missing 43

Photo credit: 

Lindsay Beyerstein.

The Best of the Week’s News

  • An early profile of the shooter in the Umpqua Community College massacre.
     
  • Terror in California: A suspicious fire at Planned Parenthood was arson. 
     
  • Captain America unmasked at the Clinton Correctional Facility. 
     
  • A new theory emerges in the disappearance of Mexico’s 43 missing normal school students. 
September 29, 2015

Hillman Judge Ta-Nehisi Coates Wins MacArthur Genius Grant

Photo credit: 

Courtesy of Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

Hillman Judge Ta-Nehisi Coates has been selected to recieve a MacArthur Genius Grant for his work in journalism, social criticism and memoir. The $625,000 grant is awarded to exceptionally creative people. It provides a stipend for five years with no strings attached: 

“We take ‘no strings’ quite seriously,” said Cecilia A. Conrad, the foundation’s managing director. “They don’t have to report to us. They can use the funds in any way they see fit.” [NYT]

Coates, the author of the best-selling memoir, Between the World and Me, is one of 24 outstanding winners. This year’s MacArthur fellows include a cutting-edge brain researchers, visual artists, economists, and a puppeteer. 

September 18, 2015

Sidney’s Picks: Secret Arms Deals; C.J. Chivers; and Slavery

Photo credit: 

Nicoliee528, Creative Commons.

The Best of the Week’s News

  • Would you buy a used missile from this company, known as Purple Shovel?
     
  • Constitutionally, slavery was a national institution.
     
  • C.J. Chivers retires from war reporting after fourteen storied years. 
     
  • 6 hours for work, 8 hours for sleep, 10 hours for what we will: Sweden experiments with shorter work days at full pay.

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