“Poisoned Water: How a Navy ship dumped fuel and sickened its own crew” article recognized in 2024 MRE Journalism Contest

James LaPorta is an award-winning journalist with eleven years of experience in covering national security and military affairs. He is currently a verification producer with CBS News and was formerly an investigative reporter for the Associated Press. He is a former U.S. Marine infantryman and a veteran of the Afghanistan war.

Konstantin Toropin is a reporter for Military.com, where he serves as the publication’s Pentagon correspondent while also specializing in coverage of the Navy. He is a Navy veteran, having served five years in the surface fleet as a signals intelligence analyst. Prior to joining Military.com, he covered breaking national news for CNN. 

In 2023, he was recognized as one of the top 10 veterans in journalism by Military Veterans in Journalism (MVJ) and — along with a team of Military.com reporters — received the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation award for reporting on national defense in 2024.

His coverage focuses on the quality of life for service members in the military and has included helping to report on contaminated water aboard the USS Boxer and a suicide cluster on the USS George Washington.

Toropin holds a bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University in journalism and a master’s degree in mass communication from the University of Minnesota.

Patricia Kime is a contract and freelance writer and editor who covers military and veterans health care and personnel issues for Military.com and general assignment for additional publications. From 2011 to 2016, she served as a senior staff writer at the Military Times newspapers and digital publications, covering military medicine and health care, veterans issues and health policy in Congress. She began her career as an intelligence assistant for the federal government from 1988 to 1990 and moved to journalism later that year, covering city government and military base relations in Jacksonville, N.C. for The Daily News. She has worked as an editor at the Marine Corps Gazette, an education reporter for The Potomac News in Woodbridge, Va., and a general assignment reporter in Twentynine Palms, Calif., at the Desert Trail. She later wrote features for the Palm Springs Desert Sun daily newspaper as well as the publication’s magazines and web site. As a freelance writer, she has covered topics ranging from real estate and historic preservation to travel, style, home and celebrity profiles. Her travel guides “Hidden Philadelphia” and “Moon Handbooks Washington D.C.” are sold widely and her work has been features in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, USA Weekend, Northern Virginia magazine, Executive Travel, AOL and elsewhere. She is a member of the Military Reporters and Editors Association and the Association of Health Care Journalists.