The Chancellor Award

Award winners epitomize the role of journalism in a free society.

Seattle Times investigative reporter Ken Armstrong receives the 2009 John Chancellor Award

Armstrong was honored at a Columbia University ceremony on Nov. 18.

NEW YORK, Sept. 22, 2009—An investigative reporter whose work prompted the Governor of Illinois to declare a moratorium on executions is the recipient of the 2009 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism. Ken Armstrong, a staff reporter for The Seattle Times, was selected for the depth and impact of his coverage of the criminal justice system.

The John Chancellor Award is presented each year to a reporter for his or her cumulative accomplishments. The prize honors the legacy of pioneering television correspondent and longtime NBC News anchor John Chancellor. A nine-member committee selected Armstrong for the award, which bestows a $25,000 prize for the winner. The award will be presented at a dinner at Columbia University’s Low Library in New York on Nov. 18, 2009.

"Armstrong’s stories on capital punishment in Illinois exposed wrongdoing and saved lives. He has consistently taken important local issues and brought them to national attention," said Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Journalism School and chair of the award’s selection committee. "This kind of tireless reporting performs a critical public service and embodies the spirit of the John Chancellor Award."

About the 2009 Chancellor Awardee

Ken Armstrong has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist four times in four different categories: public service, national, explanatory and investigative reporting. For the past 20 years, he has covered a range of social issues, including failures in the criminal justice system to illegally sealed court records, Orwellian conditions in the Postal Service and the community’s complicity in protecting wayward athletes.

Armstrong previously worked at the Chicago Tribune, where, with Steve Mills, he wrote a groundbreaking five-part series, “The Failure of the Death Penalty in Illinois,” that exposed the fault lines radiating through the state’s system of capital punishment. Citing the Tribune series, then Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000. Three years later he emptied death row, commuting 164 death sentences to life in prison. Ryan also granted full pardons to four death row inmates based on innocence. Each inmate had been profiled in the Tribune series.

"Ken Armstrong is an extraordinary example of the best of our profession. His work has made a lasting impression on the communities, big and small, in which he has lived and worked," said Seattle Times Executive Editor David Boardman. "He writes with force about people with power and writes with sensitivity about people journalists tend to dismiss."

The John Chancellor Award was established in 1995 by Ira A. Lipman, founder and chairman of Guardsmark, LLC, one of the world's largest security service firms. In addition to Lipman and Dean Lemann, the selection panel includes journalists Tom Brokaw, Ellis Cose, John L. Dotson Jr., Hank Klibanoff, Michele Norris, Lynn Sherr and John Chancellor’s daughter, Mary Chancellor.