Florida Center for Investigative Reporting Associate Director Trevor Aaronson won the 2012 John Jay College/H.F. Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award in the single-story category for his article “The Informants,” which was published in the September/October issue of Mother Jones.
Aaronson wrote “The Informants” as an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California-Berkeley. The story documented how the FBI recruits and uses informants in U.S. Muslim communities nationwide to initiate terrorism sting operations. Most recently, the FBI conducted a terrorism sting in Tampa.
One of the judges said Aaronson’s story “helps renew my faith in the future of investigative journalism,” calling it “a critically serious subject packaged and presented as a smooth, suspenseful read.”
Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won in the series category for “Both Sides of the Law,” an investigation of the Milwaukee police force.