Ruth Ford, Janaki Chadha and Adi Talwar.

City Limits’ 2017 investigation of the causes of wide disparities in life expectancy and death rates among New York City neighborhoods has been awarded a Society of Silurians’ 2018 medallion in the category of Science and Health Reporting in Any Medium.

Ruth Ford was lead reporter on the series, with reporter/researcher Janaki Chadha, photographer Adi Talwar and editor Jarrett Murphy.

The Silurians were founded in 1924 as a gathering of veteran journalists. Members have included Charles Edward Russell, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and co-founder of the NAACP, Herbert Bayard Swope, Arthur Brisbane, William Randolph Hearst, Lincoln Steffens and John Steinbeck. The name refers to the Paleozoic Era of the Silurian Age, when scorpions first began emerging from water.

City Limits has been honored by the Silurians twice in the past: Last spring, the CUNY J-school reporting team of Jack D’Isidoro, Patrick Donachie, Maura Ewing, Rose Itzcovitz, Olivia Leach, Samuel Lieberman, Jessica Bal, Annamarya Scaccia and Brooke Williams took home the award for best environmental reporting for their investigation of the state’s lackluster green jobs program.

And in 2013, John Sandman’s investigation of payday lending (which was supported by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute) won the medallion for “news commentary.”