IRE members donate Pulitzer Prize money for training

Michael Berens and Ken Armstrong both had extraordinary resumes before winning the Pulitzer Prize last week. Each of the reporters for The Seattle Times had produced investigations that won a long list of prizes, including multiple IRE Awards. The work honored by the Pulitzer judges -- "Methadone and the Politics of Pain" -- had already been honored many times.

So the fact that Berens and Armstrong won wasn't a surprise. What they're doing with the prize money, however, is extraordinary. They've dedicated the $10,000 prize to pay for IRE training for fellow staffers in Seattle. 

Armstrong said the decision was easy. "We just wanted to find a way to do something for the paper and something for IRE," he said. "IRE, more than any other organization you can think of, is the group that people turn to when they want to learn this craft and they want to be inspired. And to me, those two things are equally important."