Seattle Times reporters Michael J. Berens and Ken Armstrong, members of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, have won the 2012 Seldon Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, given annually by the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Judges praised the "Thorough and groundbreaking reporting on how more than 2,000 people in Washington state have fatally overdosed on the painkiller methadone. ‘Methadone and the Politics of Pain’ showed how the state steered Medicaid patients toward methadone despite repeated warnings about its risks. The drug saved the state money because it is a cheap painkiller, but poor patients paid for the savings with their lives.”