Wendy Ruderman
Wendy Ruderman (born in 1969 on Long Island, N.Y.) is an American journalist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. She won with Barbara Laker the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.[1] Ruderman, along with Inquirer colleagues Barbara Laker and Dylan Purcell, was named a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer for local reporting for “Toxic City: Sick Schools,” which examined how environmental hazards in Philadelphia schools deprive children of healthy spaces to learn and grow.
Life
Ruderman was raised in Cherry Hill, New Jersey and graduated from Western Maryland College, now McDaniel College, with a BA in communications in 1991.[2] She was editor of The Williamstown Plain Dealer. In 1993, she worked in public relations at WHYY-TV and WHYY-FM. She graduated from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with an MS in 1997. She worked in the statehouse bureau of The Trenton Times,Associated Press and Bergen Record. She was a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer, beginning in December 2002, before joining the Philadelphia Daily News in 2007. She and her Daily News colleague, Barbara Laker, won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for their work exposing a rogue narcotics squad with the Philadelphia Police Department. The "Tainted Justice" series, brought about an FBI / Philadelphia Police internal affairs investigation.[3]
Ruderman left the Daily News for The New York Times in 2012 and returned to the Daily News in August 2013.[4] She currently works on the Investigations Team at The Philadelphia Inquirer. She was named a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for her work exposing toxins in Philadelphia schools.
Ruderman serves on the Ethics Advisory Council as part of the Ethics Program at Villanova's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Works
- Busted: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love, HarperCollins, 2014, ISBN 978-0-06-208545-0
- The book has been optioned by a production company that is working on turning the story into a limited TV series. The New York Times Book Review section singled out “BUSTED: A Tale of Corruption and Betrayal in the City of Brotherly Love” as a true crime book that is “a personable and fast-reading ride.”
Mackenzie Fierceton Controversy
On November 22, 2020, Ruderman authored a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about University of Pennsylvania student Mackenzie Fierceton winning a Rhodes Scholarship.[5] Fierceton later withdrew from the Rhodes program admid controversy over how she characterized herself in various applications as a "first-generation, low-income" student.[6]
After interviewing Fierceton for roughly twenty-five minutes, Ruderman published an article that began “Mackenzie Fierceton grew up poor.”[6][5] Fierceton said she never described herself this way, and Ruderman acknowledged that Fierceton did not describe herself as poor.[6] Still, Ruderman's language was used in the Rhodes Trust's investigation to support the allegation that Fiereceton misrepresented herself as growing up poor.[7] The University of Pennsylvania's investigators did not find evidence that this misleading statement could be attributed to specific actions by Fierceton.[7]
References
- ^ "The 2010 Pulitzer Prize Winner in Investigative Reporting: Barbara Laker and Wendy Ruderman of Philadelphia Daily News", Pulitzer Prize. Accessed January 3, 2018. "Wendy Ruderman, 40, born in Cane Place, NY and raised in Cherry Hill, NJ, has been a newspaper reporter for more than 15 years."
- ^ "McDaniel College". www.mcdaniel.edu. Archived from the original on 2016-01-31.
- ^ Jeffrey C. Billman (October 20, 2010). "Literature & Journalism: Barbara Laker & Wendy Ruderman: The News Hounds". Philadelphia City Paper. Archived from the original on July 1, 2012. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
- ^ Andrew Beaujon (June 6, 2013). "Wendy Ruderman leaves NYT, returns to Philly Daily News". Poynter.
- ^ a b Ruderman, Wendy. "Penn student who aged out of foster care wins prestigious Rhodes Scholarship". The Philadelphia Inquirer.
- ^ a b c Aviv, Rachel. "How An Ivy League School Turned Against A Student". The New Yorker. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
- ^ a b Bartlett, Tom. "The Dredging". Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 12 July 2024.
External links
- Journalist's Twitter
- http://fora.tv/speaker/11563/Wendy_Ruderman
- v
- t
- e
- Edward J. Mowery (1953)
- Alvin McCoy (1954)
- Roland Kenneth Towery (1955)
- Arthur Daley (1956)
- Wallace Turner (1957)
- George Beveridge (1958)
- John Harold Brislin (1959)
- Miriam Ottenberg (1960)
- Edgar May (1961)
- George Bliss (1962)
- Oscar Griffin Jr. (1963)
- James V. Magee, Albert V. Gaudiosi & Frederick Meyer (1964)
- Gene Goltz (1965)
- John Anthony Frasca (1966)
- Gene Miller (1967)
- J. Anthony Lukas (1968)
- Al Delugach & Denny Walsh (1969)
- Harold E. Martin (1970)
- William Jones (1971)
- Timothy Leland, Gerard M. O'Neill, Stephen Kurkjian & Ann Desantis (1972)
- The Sun Newspapers of Omaha (1973)
- William Sherman (1974)
- The Indianapolis Star (1975)
- Chicago Tribune (1976)
- Acel Moore & Wendell Rawls Jr. (1977)
- Anthony R. Dolan (1978)
- Gilbert M. Gaul & Elliot G. Jaspin (1979)
- Stephen Kurkjian, Alexander B. Hawes Jr., Nils Bruzelius, Joan Vennochi & Robert M. Porterfield (1980)
- Clark Hallas & Robert B. Lowe (1981)
- Paul Henderson (1982)
- Loretta Tofani (1983)
- Kenneth Cooper, Joan Fitz Gerald, Jonathan Kaufman, Norman Lockman, Gary McMillan, Kirk Scharfenberg & David Wessel (1984)
- Lucy Morgan, Jack Reed & William K. Marimow (1985)
- Jeffrey A. Marx & Michael M. York (1986)
- Daniel R. Biddle, H.G. Bissinger, Fredric N. Tulsky & John Woestendiek (1987)
- Dean Baquet, William C. Gaines & Ann Marie Lipinski (19)
- Bill Dedman (1989)
- Lou Kilzer (1990)
- Joseph T. Hallinan & Susan M. Headden (1991)
- Lorraine Adams & Dan Malone (1992)
- Jeff Brazil & Steve Berry (1993)
- Providence Journal-Bulletin (1994)
- Stephanie Saul & Brian Donovan (1995)
- The Orange County Register (1996)
- Eric Nalder, Deborah Nelson & Alex Tizon (1997)
- Gary Cohn & Will Englund (1998)
- Miami Herald (1999)
- Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley & Martha Mendoza (2000)
- David Willman (2001)
- Sari Horwitz, Scott Higham & Sarah Cohen (2002)
- Clifford J. Levy (2003)
- Michael D. Sallah, Joe Mahr & Mitch Weiss (2004)
- Nigel Jaquiss (2005)
- Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi & R. Jeffrey Smith (2006)
- Brett Blackledge (2007)
- Walt Bogdanich, Jake Hooker & Chicago Tribune (2008)
- David Barstow (2009)
- Barbara Laker, Wendy Ruderman & Sheri Fink (2010)
- Paige St. John (2011)
- Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan, Chris Hawley, Michael J. Berens & Ken Armstrong (2012)
- David Barstow & Alejandra Xanic von Bertrab (2013)
- Chris Hamby (2014)
- Eric Lipton & The Wall Street Journal (2015)
- Leonora LaPeter Anton, Anthony Cormier, Michael Braga & Esther Htusan (2016)
- Eric Eyre (2017)
- The Washington Post (2018)
- Matt Hamilton, Harriet Ryan & Paul Pringle (2019)
- Brian Rosenthal (2020)
- Matt Rocheleau, Vernal Coleman, Laura Crimaldi, Evan Allen & Brendan McCarthy (2021)
- Corey G. Johnson, Rebecca Woolington & Eli Murray (2022)
- Staff of The Wall Street Journal (2023)