Miriam Ottenberg

Her father was Louis Ottenberg (1886–1960),^[2] a lawyer for 45 years in the District of Columbia, at whose suggestion the American Bar Association created the Magna Carta Memorial in Runnymede, England.^[3] Her mother was Nettie (Podell) Ottenberg, one of the first training social workers in the United States who won the first federal funding for day care.^[4]

Ottenberg's follow-up stories led to enactment of remedial law.^[5]

With several honors and awards given during her career, Ottenberg also was one of the first reporters to reveal that the Mafia was an organized crime network.^[5][6] She once summed up her feelings about her role as a journalist: "A reporter should expose the bad and campaign for the good. That's the way I was brought up."^[7]

Ottenberg appeared on the CBS television program, I've Got a Secret, on the May 4, 1960 episode. Her secret was “We all won Pulitzer Prizes this week.”^[8]

• Co-winner of the Washington Newspaper Guild competition for public service articles in 1953
• Honorable mention awards in the same category in 1954 and 1958, and in 1959
• Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for best investigation report: "Buyer Beware"
• Bill Pryor Award of the Washington Newspaper Guild for her series on used car fraud, "Buyer Beware"
• First place in the local news category for her stories on an abortion ring and on murders of women
• In May 1958, capital police, jurists, and local and federal government officials held a party to pay tribute to Ottenberg's efforts against crime
• She was given awards for distinction by the National Council of Jewish Women in 1963 and by the American Association of University Women in 1975
• In 1979 she won the Hope Chest Award from the National Capital Chapter of the National MS Society

Ottenberg published the following books:

• The Warren Commission Report: The Assassination of President Kennedy Miriam Ottenberg
• The Pursuit of Hope Ottenberg, Miriam ISBN 9780892560691
• The Federal Prosecutors (Prentice-Hall), a book about the FBI (1962)