BW Nails a Biggie

Amid the doom and gloom and general awfulness of recent days comes some rare cheery news (albeit of interest to only a few): my alma mater, Business Week, has snared a prestigious investigative journalism award for a series of articles entitled "Prisoners of Debt." The magazine won first place in the Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism.

What makes this particularly satisfying is that Prisoners of Debt was a bangup-great series on a subject of wide interest. As the awards entry points out, it "revealed how large financial firms regularly collaborate with doctors and hospitals to turn unpaid medical bills into high-interest consumer debt. It explained how banks and credit card firms badger unsophisticated consumers to pay off debts even after they have been extinguished by the bankruptcy courts and also examined so-called 'micro-lending' that ties up the indigent in high-interest debt."

Hopefully this will get some ad dollars flowing in (but don't bet on it). Certainly it can't do the staff's flagging morale any harm at all.

© 2008 Gary Weiss. All rights reserved.