The Sidney Hillman Foundation talks to the monthly Sidney winners about the impact of their work, and the stories left untold.

JANUARY: Anderson Cooper, host of "Anderson Cooper 360°," talks about his Sidney-winning coverage of Haiti.

1. Why have you committed yourself  to this story of human tragedy and government failure with so much more energy than most of the rest of American media?

I think all of us still covering this story wish there were more reporters from other networks still on the ground. Thankfully, CNN is committed to reporting on what is still unfolding. My producer, Charlie Moore, my cameraman, Neil Hallsworth and I, and all the other CNN teams in Haiti, feel that what the Haitian people continue to face everyday is extraordinary, and the least we can do is to bear witness to their struggle. Unless the world continues to pay attention to what is happening in Haiti, there is a good chance that the needs of the Haitian people will once again be forgotten.

2. What has been the response to your work?

The response among Haitians and Haitian-Americans has been very positive. I think they want the story told, and appreciate the lengths to which we have gone to do that.

3. What should Americans know?

That the tragedy is ongoing. There is a lot more happening in Haiti than the 10 American missionaries in jail. Hundreds of thousands are homeless sleeping on the streets or in parks. People are hungry, and schools are closed, and the Haitian government has shown little ability to meet the needs of its people.

4. Do you see any hope for fundamental change for Haiti through the recovery process?

I don't think it is my job to be hopeful or to be pessimistic. I just try to report what I see. I can tell you most of the Haitians I've talked to want more from their own government, and I do think unless there is strong leadership on the ground in Haiti, it will be very difficult to truly bring about lasting change.

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DECEMBER - Tony Judt, professor of history and frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, talks about his Sidney-winning essay and his thoughts on social justice journalism.

1. How did you decide to write this?

I had been thinking about these matters for some time, as you can see from some of my earlier essays. But I decided to use the occasion of a public lecture I was due to give in October to pull my thoughts together and try to say something of broader consequence. And of course I was moved to do so by what I see as the sadly diminished condition of radical political conversation – in this country and abroad – as well as by the profound inequities and injustices which seem to me to have resurfaced in the course of the past generation.

2. What was the response to this work?

Remarkable and very favorable. I’ve been especially pleased at the number of young people who responded to the lecture or the essay by asking that I elaborate on a number of themes – in part because they had never heard anyone address them before (!). I’ve also had some very interesting and serious responses from people in Europe, actively interested in social policy and efforts to revive the energies of the social democratic left. It’s been most gratifying to know i) that so many people care and ii) that I appear to have struck a chord in my approach.

3. What is your opinion on the state of social justice journalism and writing in the US?

I can’t pretend to be familiar with every journal and journalist at work in this field. But I will say this: over the past three decades, I think we have seen a steady decline in the quality and courage of social justice journalism and writing, here in the US as in the UK (where I came from). To some extent this has been compensated by the admirable American tradition of muckraking journalism, especially those writers who have addressed issues related to war, financial misbehavior, the social condition of the underclass and so forth. But what is lacking, it seems to me, is the sort of intellectual or political overview which helps readers make sense of the bad news that they read. Without that sort of synoptic writing, you simply end up with a depressed and resigned citizenry – aware of what is wrong but adrift when it comes to imagining what to do about it.

NOVEMBER - Dave Jamieson, a freelance writer based in Washington D.C. and winner of the November Sidney, talks about what frequent 911 callers taught him about the health care system in "The Treatment of Kenny Farnsworth."

1. When did you first hear about this story and why did you decide to look into it?

As is often the case, I knew the kind of profile I wanted to write long before I knew who exactly my subject would be. When I was a beat reporter in Washington I used to do ride-alongs with firefighters and paramedics. I was surprised to see how many of the same patients these first responders handled day in and day out—the so-called “frequent fliers”—and how the medics developed such emotionally complicated relationships with them. I found it all fascinating. So for years I wanted to write about someone who was essentially a ward of the city’s ambulances and emergency rooms and to look at all the economic questions such a person raises.

I first heard about Kenny Farnsworth in 2007; it seemed whenever I dropped his name to a firefighter or paramedic I got some kind of amusing story in return. Once I got serious about tracking him down I started leaving my card at some of his usual haunts—a firehouse, a tow lot, etc. He gave me a ring one day back in the spring and we started hanging out.

2. What surprised you most as you began following Farnsworth?

What surprised me the most was how the context of the story changed while I was working on it. Initially, we didn’t intend to do a health care story, per se. I was just interested in frequent fliers and how some cities are changing how they handle them, taking more of a social worker’s approach than a paramedic’s. But then this whole health care debate started raging. My wise editor at the Post, David Rowell, said we should take a closer look at where frequent fliers fit into the health care crisis. As it turns out, we do waste a lot of money handling problems in the emergency room when we could be treating them much more cheaply through primary care. And I felt like Kenny’s own story did a nice job of illustrating those larger problems and inefficiencies.

3. What has the response been since you published it?

Kenny tends to provoke a lot of passion in people. Paramedics and nurses have devoted so much time to him over the years that many of them see him as a scourge. And yet he’s nice enough and colorful enough to stir a lot of sympathy in others. It’s been more or less the same with those who’ve read his story—a frothy brew of compassion and outrage. As one woman wrote me, “I was torn between feeling sympathy for Mr. Farnsworth and latent anger at how his actions will indirectly affect my health care bills.”

4. Is there something you wish you had room to include in the piece but could not?

Privacy laws can make it very difficult to report stories dealing with health care. It would have been nice to delve more into Kenny’s particular health problems, but some of the physicians I reached out to were understandably cagey about discussing an individual patient in print. Same for paramedics and hospital workers. It also would’ve been nice to spend some time in emergency rooms talking to people, but again you run into privacy laws there. I really came to sympathize with full-time health reporters—there are more legal hurdles in that niche than in most others.

5. If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

I’d be curious to see if more cities have started targeting frequent fliers for treatment outside of the ambulance and the emergency room. There have been some great successes in places like San Francisco and Washington in that regard, and though it’s hard to calculate it looks like those programs are saving cities and hospitals real money, as well as changing quite a few lives for the better.

And of course, I’d like to see how Kenny is doing in another year. Whether he’s still visiting the hospital routinely, whether he’s got a fresh stack of medical bills, and whether he finds himself in a stable living arrangement or out on the street. It certainly would be nice to see him in a better place.

OCTOBER -Katy Bolger, graduate student at the school of journalism at New York University and winner of the October Sidney, talks about reporting on the Navajo Nation for her piece in the series, "The Forgotten Navajo: People In Need."

What surprised you most as you began to look into the Navajo Nation?

Going in, I knew little to nothing about the Navajo Nation, its people or its issues; coming out, I was overwhelmed by the task: how to write a story of such magnitude, to hit on the big picture, while focusing on the specific stories, to do justice to the Nation's history while relaying the immediacy of the problems. The answer, of course, was in the voices of the people, but not just the victims, rather all the people: those who are underserved, as well as those who hold out a hand to the Navajos: their own politicians, coal company representatives, academics, and government bureaucrats. The story speaks for itself.

What has the response been since you published it?

The response to the story of the travails of the Navajo people has been sympathy, of course, but also incredulity. Well-educated, well informed people have a hard time accepting the stories I tell them about the things I have learned: it just doesn't seem possible in this day and age....

If you went back to this story in another year, what would you want to follow-up on?

There are two additional stories I would like to write about: The first is about the Bennett Freeze and its lasting effects in the Nation. The second story is about the two governments: the United States and the Navajo Nation and how the very nature of two sovereign governments with jurisdiction make strange and undemocratic bedfellows.

Have you done any social justice journalism before? Do you plan to continue with this type of work?

I had a conversation with a colleague today who talked about the conflict between the right to do something and the responsibility to not do it. This seems like an interesting theme to keep in mind as I continue to investigate social injustices.