Nina Bernstein ( born 1949 ) is a journalist , best known for her '' New York Times '' reporting on social and legal issues , including award-winning coverage of immigration , child welfare and health care . In 21 years at the Times , from which she retired at the end of 2016 , she was a metro reporter , a national correspondent and an investigative reporter . Bernstein graduated from Harvard in 1970 with a B.A. in European history and literature . She worked for newspapers in Milwaukee and Iowa , then was a reporter for New York Newsday for 9 years , including time as a foreign correspondent in Berlin and Bosnia . She joined the Times in 1995 . That year , with three colleagues , she won the George Polk Award for distinguished metropolitan coverage . Immediately after the September 11 attacks she did in-street interviews at locations around Manhattan . Her reporting on deaths in immigration detention received numerous awards , including the 2010 Paul Tobenkin Memorial Award for courage in journalism awarded by the Columbia School of Journalism , and a 2009 Sidney J. Hillman Award . She was part of a Metro team that won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News for coverage of the scandal that led to the resignation of the governor of New York . Bernstein was a Nieman fellow at Harvard in 1983-1984 , and in 2002-2003 was a journalism fellow at the American Academy in Berlin . She is the author of The Lost Children of Wilder : The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care ( Pantheon , 2001 ) , which won the Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism given by the New York Public Library , and a 2002 PEN America First Nonfiction award . It was also a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Award . She has contributed lead chapters to two academic books , " Writing Immigration : Scholars and Journalists in Dialogue ( University of California Press , 2011 ) , and " Challenging Immigration Detention : Academics , Activists and Policy-Makers ( Edward Elgar Publishing 2017 ) . She is also the author of a children 's book of fiction , Magic by the Book ( Farrar , Strauss & Giroux , 2005 )
September 11 attacks
September 11 attacks
Nina Bernstein