The folks over at The Orange County Register's OC Watchdog team submitted just four of their journalist accomplishments to a California Newspaper Publishers Association public service contest and deservedly won first place.
Those stories included revelations about:
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–AIG partying at an Orange County resort hotel after taking a federal taxpayer bailout;
–A water district's ridiculous plan to increase employee pensions by $70 million in the midst of an economic collapse;
–Insight into how to catch a driver who committed a hit-and-run on a local toll road;
–The faultiness of a State Farm company attempt to sue an Orange County woman for an accident in Fresno.
Congratulations to Watchdog reporters: Teri Sforza, Jennifer Muir, Brian Joseph and Tony Saavedra.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.