Daniel Golden is the editor of ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. In 2004, he won the Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting for a series of Wall Street Journal articles exposing how some wealthy white families can use assets — cash and political connections — to get their children into top colleges and universities. Then in 2006, he wrote a book on the same subject, “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” adding to his earlier revelations about how elite institutions of higher education talk incessantly about merit-based admissions but don’t always walk that walk.