The Washington Monthly's Monthly Journalism Award.

• Position: Brief Article

WALT BOGDANICH, BARRY MEIER, MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

"Medicine's Middlemen: Spending Money, Strings Attached," & "Medicine's Middlemen: One Group's Conflicts" The New York Times, March 4 & 26, 2002

This series of investigative articles examines the seamy world of purchasing groups that buy medical products for hospitals, and the suspiciously close ties between these groups and certain pharmaceutical companies. "Spending Money, Strings Attached" outlines how these hand-in-glove relationships often result in other, better, non-affiliated products being excluded from hospital use. "One Group's Conflicts" looks at the incestuous relationship between F.D.A. violation-prone American Pharmaceuticals and buying group Premier Inc. Taken together or separately, these well-written, solidly reported articles are textbook examples of journalism in the public interest.

THE MONTHLY JOURNALISM AWARD is presented each month to one...