San Antonio Express-News reporter Sig Christenson, shown in Baghdad after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, delivered flowers, managed a pizzeria, moved furniture and worked on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico before embarking on a journalism career.
Sig Christenson, longtime military affairs correspondent for the San Antonio Express-News, has won the premier award in his journalism specialty: the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on the National Defense.
The Ford prize usually goes to correspondents for national newspapers or television networks. Rarely has it been awarded to a reporter for a regional newspaper.
“Christenson's style of high-quality local defense journalism is a critical element of the national conversation,” the judges wrote.
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He was honored for stories published throughout 2025 that chronicled Pete Hegseth's tumultuous, norm-shattering first year as secretary of defense.
“Christenson examined … major shifts in military culture with deep local and historical context, including the potential renaming of the Department of Defense to Department of War, efforts to instill a ‘scary, tough' ethos at military boot camps, and the uncharacteristic silence of retired military leadership during significant national security debates,†the judges wrote.
Renee Dudley and Doris Burke of ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative newsroom, received honorable mention for their series “Zero Trust,†which called attention to security vulnerabilities created by Microsoft's reliance on China-based engineers to maintain Defense Department computer systems.
A separate Ford prize for Distinguished Reporting on the Presidency went to Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer of the Atlantic for their “insightful reporting†on the Trump White House.
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Results of the journalism competition were announced Tuesday by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation in Grand Rapids, Mich.
The foundation established the annual prizes in 1988 to recognize “reportorial excellence and the fostering of better public understanding of the presidency and national defense.†Winners are selected by panels of judges drawn from journalism, academia and people with experience in the executive branch or military affairs. Prize recipients receive $5,000 each.
Christenson’s winning entry documented a year of upheaval in the armed forces. After taking office in January 2025, Hegseth fired dozens of generals, dismissed the military's top legal advisers, banished transgender people from the armed services, and dismantled diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, all in the name of restoring the military's focus on “lethality.â€
Among the articles in Christenson's submission was an exclusive report revealing that the Air Force had removed from its basic training curriculum an instructional video on the Tuskegee Airmen, the Black bomber pilots whose World War II heroics helped shatter the race barrier in the military. The video was deemed DEI propaganda.
Christenson’s profile of the late Hector Santa Anna, a pathbreaking Latino aviator and decorated World War II bomber pilot, described how his legacy was caught up in the DEI purge.
Santa Anna, who received his pilot training in San Antonio, flew B-17 bombing missions over Nazi Germany and delivered food to blockaded sections of Berlin during the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift. He later worked for NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration and was featured in books, documentaries and a play about the war.
A biography of Santa Anna appeared on a Defense Department website devoted to notable Hispanic Americans buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Christenson reported that in early 2025, the page was deleted. Online tributes to African American and female veterans suffered the same fate.
“I don’t understand why they feel so intimidated by dead veterans,†Santa Anna’s daughter, Sylvia Santa Anna Willoughby, then 74, told Christenson. “You know, he was not hired as a pilot in World War II based on DEI. They didn’t do it that way.â€
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Other articles in Christenson’s entry explored the implications of Hegseth's push to rename the Defense Department the Department of War and his vow to reintroduce verbal abuse and physical force to basic training in order to — in Hegseth's words — “instill healthy fear in new recruits.â€
A fifth article described how retired senior military officers, normally outspoken about defense matters, had refrained from criticizing Hegseth or President Donald Trump for fear the president would subject them to criminal charges, tax investigations or other legal retribution.
The prize judges, noting that San Antonio is home to tens of thousands of active-duty and retired service members, lauded Christenson for taking on issues of national importance “while including detailed brush strokes highlighting the impacts that matter most to his hometown readership.”
Christenson was born in Houston and raised in Bellaire. After graduating from the University of Houston with a degree in communications, he delivered flowers, managed a pizzeria, moved furniture and worked on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico before deciding to give journalism a try.
He started as a reporter at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and went on to work at the now-defunct Tulsa Tribune in Oklahoma, the Temple Daily Telegram and the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville.
He joined the San Antonio Express-News in 1997 and took on one of the paper's most important beats: covering the armed forces in a city that calls itself “Military City USA.†San Antonio is home to Lackland and Randolph Air Force bases, the Army’s Fort Sam Houston, and major commands and military medical institutions.
Christenson covered the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as an embedded reporter with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division. He made seven subsequent reporting trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. He has also reported from Europe, India and South Korea.
He did groundbreaking reporting on a sexual abuse scandal at Lackland Air Force Base, where dozens of basic training instructors were found to have sexually assaulted or otherwise mistreated recruits. An investigative series he co-wrote on the scandal, “Twice Betrayed,†won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award in 2014.
Major news events he has covered include the 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco; the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster; mass shootings at Fort Hood in 2009, at a church in Sutherland Springs in 2017 and at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in 2022; as well as tropical storms, floods and hurricanes.
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Christenson's work has been honored by Texas Managing Editors, the Scripps Howard National Journalism Awards and other professional organizations. In March 2026, the Society of Professional Journalists gave him its Open Doors Award in recognition of his “expertise and diligence in covering U.S. military and national affairs across nearly three decades.â€
He is a co-founder, former president and current board member of Military Reporters & Editors.
Ford, the nation's 38th president, was a decorated Navy veteran who served in the South Pacific during World War II. He died in 2006.
