NEW YORK - The Virgin Islands Daily News has won an unprecedented third-straight national Public Service Award, the Associated Press Managing Editors organization announced Monday.

The award, which is the sixth APME top honor The Daily News has won in 14 years, is for the investigative reporting by Joy Blackburn and Tim Fields that uncovered life-threatening corruption at Charlotte Kimelman Cancer Institute and Schneider Regional Medical Center on St. Thomas.

Those reports, which The Daily News published in July and December 2008, also received top honors from The Investigative Reporters and Editors, a national organization for journalists.

Fields was on the reporting team for all of The Daily News' three straight APME awards.

The newspaper's APME award last year was for reporting by Fields, Ian Morrison and Lynn Freehill that analyzed and disclosed the full impact of the environmental user fee that the V.I. Waste Management Authority wanted to impose on every business and individual.

The Daily News award three years ago was for reporting by Fields, Merlin JnBaptiste and Joseph Tsidulko that revealed V.I. police detectives had coerced false evidence from a witness in order to frame two young men for murder. That investigative project also analyzed and spotlighted the inadequacies of the 911 emergency call system and examined the V.I. Police Department's low rate of solved murders.

"The journalists at The Daily News are the best in the business," Executive Editor J. Lowe Davis said Monday. "We don't need these honors and awards to affirm that, but it is wonderful to see our colleagues at newspapers large and small across the nation recognize the quality of the work the staff at The Daily News produces so consistently.

"There just are not enough words to describe how long and hard the reporters and editors work to give the people of the Virgin Islands a newspaper of the highest caliber. I am so proud of what they accomplish."

APME, an association of editors at AP's 1,500 member newspapers in the U.S. and newspapers served by the Canadian Press in Canada, recognizes journalism excellence with annual awards in five categories. This year's winners were selected during a meeting of the association's board of directors that ended last week in New York.

The awards will be presented during the group's annual conference Oct. 28-30 in St. Louis. Directors did not participate in discussions or votes on their own newspapers' entries.