Ian Shapira was awarded the 2020 George Polk Award in Journalism for State Reporting. He is a grandson of Heaven Hill co-founder David Shapira and the son of the late Harry Shapira, the company’s former executive vice president,

One of the oldest and most prestigious awards in journalism, the George Polk Awards honor a CBS News reporter who was murdered in 1948 while covering the Greek civil war. The Polk committee, whose institutional home is at Long Island University, recognized Ian for his reporting about the mistreatment of Black cadets at Virginia Military Institute.

His coverage prompted Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a VMI alumnus, to order an investigation – which later led to the resignation of the college’s long-time superintendent. Since the investigation, VMI has also appointed its first Black leader and removed the campus’s 108-year-old statue of Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson.

“I am so thankful to the Polk judges for the award,” Ian said. “To me, the honor validates and recognizes the willingness and candor of so many VMI alumni and students, along with faculty members, who came forward to share their experiences at the school.”

Many of those students, he said, spoke anonymously, fearing reprisal, while others shared their stories with their names attached. “But without their voices, we could not have revealed what had been simmering for so long,” Ian said.

Ian joined the Washington Post in 2000 as a summer reporting intern in the Style section. He is now a member of the Metro section’s enterprise team, where he writes about social justice issues and the military and intelligence communities. His articles on the Virginia Tech and Navy Yard shootings were included in the Post’s entries that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 and that were named as a finalist in the breaking news category in 2014.

He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, a Masters in journalism from American University and a Masters in creative writing from Warren Wilson College. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Caroline, and two daughters. He got his start in journalism at the Louisville Collegiate School, where he followed in his brother Adam Shapira’s footsteps and became editor of its newspaper. In college, he became a staff writer, and later, an editor for The Daily Princetonian.

The Washington Post earned four Polk awards for reporting in 2020 — the most of any news organization this year. The Polk awards, which place a premium on investigative and enterprise reporting that gains attention and achieves results, are conferred annually to honor special achievement in journalism.

Because of the pandemic, the Polk Awards traditional luncheon ceremony in New York has been cancelled. Instead, award winners will record remarks on a video that will be available on the Polk site later this month.

As Ian expressed his gratitude to the VMI alumni, students and faculty members who shared their experiences with him, he also thanked the Washington Post for its support. “My gratitude also goes to my editors at The Washington Post, where so many other writers and reporters are free to pursue stories vital to the public interest,” he said.

For more information on the Polk Awards, please visit the awards site. For more about Ian and to read his articles, visit The Washington Post or follow him on Twitter: @ianshapira.