Bruce Baer Award
Technology Oregonian/OregonLive’s Mike Rogoway won the 2023 Bruce Baer Investigative Reporting Award for his work exposing Google’s use of water in tiles, a competition announced Friday.
“Rogoway won an award for his tireless coverage of tech giant Google secretly negotiating with the small Oregon town of The Dalles to provide water shortages to cool current and future Internet data farms,” the announcement said .
In recent years, Rogoway has focused his reporting on Oregon data centers and the resulting policy compromises. He contacted The Dalles about Google’s use of the city’s water and was turned down. He appealed to the Wasco District Attorney, who ordered the filing to be released.
The Dalles filed a lawsuit against The Oregonian/OregonLive to withhold information from the public. The commissioner of the Local Legal Initiative of the Committee of Journalists for Freedom of the Press has agreed to represent the news organization on a pro-bono basis. Last year, the Dalles settled a lawsuit and released information showing that Google has tripled the city’s water use in recent years. The case had major repercussions as Google changed its water use policies across the country. He has promised to be transparent going forward.The Dalles paid related legal fees incurred by the newspaper’s attorney, Ellen Osoinach.
The Bruce Baer Award is recognized as one of Oregon’s most competitive and prestigious investigative reporting events. Baer was a political reporter for KATU when he died of cancer at the age of 40. The price is $1,500.