Times Reporter Paltrow Wins Polk Award for Excellence

Times staff writer Scot J. Paltrow has won a George Polk award for excellence in journalism for a series of articles last June detailing how Prudential Insurance Co. of America and its Prudential Securities subsidiary marketed billions of dollars’ worth of risky limited partnerships to small investors, falsely portraying the investments as safe for retirees.

The articles showed that Prudential allowed the sales campaign for its oil and gas limited partnerships to continue well after it knew that the program was failing.

In October, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission and state regulators reached a settlement with Prudential that included the largest financial penalty ever imposed for misdeeds by a retail brokerage firm. Prudential is also the subject of a federal criminal investigation.

Winners of the Polk awards, established in 1949 in honor of a CBS reporter killed while covering the Greek civil war, are chosen by a committee of faculty and alumni of Long Island University.