Seattle Times reporters Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry are this year's recipients of the Michael Kelly Award for their series exposing the criminal histories of members of a Rose Bowl-winning University of Washington football team.

The award was presented by Atlantic Media Company chairman David Bradley at a dinner last night at Atlantic's headquarters.

In a statement, the award judges said Armstrong and Perry displayed "the commitment to truth that will alienate readers, risk advertising accounts, and jeopardize a newspaper's standing during already precarious times."

From the release: the $25,000 award is given annually to a journalist whose work exemplifies a quality that animated Kelly's own career: the fearless pursuit and expression of truth. Kelly, who was the editor of two Atlantic Media publications, The Atlantic and National Journal, was killed while covering the war in Iraq in 2003.

Finalists included NYT's Barry Bearak and Celia Dugger, Fast Company's Richard Behar and Vanity Fair's Peter Godwin. And judges included NJ's Carl Cannon and Charles Green, Army Times' Kelly Kennedy (also a Michael Kelly Award finalist last year), VF's Cullen Murphy and freelance writer Loretta Tofani, (last year's winner of the Michael Kelly Award).