WATERVILLE (AP) — Colby College is awarding its 2013 Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism to an online investigative reporter whose work led to federal charges against seven New Orleans police officers in connection with the shooting of unarmed civilians after Hurricane Katrina.

Adam Clay Thompson will receive the award at an Oct. 27 ceremony at the Waterville school. The event at Lorimer Chapel is open to the public.

Thompson, 41, is a reporter for ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom and online news source that specializes in investigative public-interest journalism. ProPublica won a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting in 2012.

Thompson from 2007 to 2010 investigated 11 shootings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in a probe that implicated New Orleans police officers.

The Lovejoy Award was established in 1952. It’s named for a Colby graduate who was murdered in 1837 while defending his press against a pro-slavery mob in Illinois.

Last year’s recipient was Washington political reporter Bob Woodward. Other past recipients include Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Halberstam, syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman, political columnist David Broder and Daniel Pearl, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was honored posthumously after he was abducted and slain in Pakistan.