James Neff | |
|---|---|
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| Occupation | Author, investigative journalist, editor |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
James Neff is an American nonfiction author and investigative journalist. He is deputy managing editor for the Philadelphia Media Network. His most recent work, Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy versus Jimmy Hoffa , was published by Little, Brown and Company in July 2015. [1]
Neff is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has a master's degree in American Civilization from the University of Texas at Austin.
Neff was a reporter at the Austin American-Statesman and at the Cleveland Plain Dealer [2] in his hometown. He was a local columnist at the Plain Dealer from 1981 to 1986. [3] Some of his columns were collected into City Beat: Stories from the Heart of Cleveland.
His 1989 biography of Teamsters president Jackie Presser, Mobbed Up: Jackie Presser's High-Wire Life in the Teamsters, the Mafia, and the FBI, was adapted into the HBO movie Teamster Boss. [4]
In 1995, Neff's third book, Unfinished Murder: The Capture of a Serial Rapist was published. This account of the investigation, capture, and conviction of serial rapist Ronnie Shelton, known in Cleveland as the West Side Rapist, was praised for its insight into the damage inflicted upon the victims of this violent man. [5]
Neff was the Willard M. Kiplinger Chair in Public Affairs Reporting in Ohio State University School of Journalism and Communication from 1994 to 1999. [6] In this position, he supervised the Kiplinger Mid-Career Program in Public Affairs Reporting, an interdisciplinary year-long program awarding master's degrees to journalists who break from their careers for an intensive study of public affairs reporting. [7]
Neff spent several years re-investigating the Dr. Sam Sheppard murder case for his next book, The Wrong Man: The Final Verdict on the Dr. Sam Sheppard Murder Case. He located police reports and grand jury transcripts from the 1950s that were previously unavailable. He concluded that Dr. Sam Sheppard did not kill his wife Marilyn in July 1954. [8]
When, in 2000, Sam Reese Sheppard, son of the late Dr. Sheppard, sued the state of Ohio claiming his father was wrongfully imprisoned for Marilyn Sheppard's murder, county prosecutors in Cleveland, Ohio, subpoenaed all of Neff's research for his book in an attempt to shore up its case that Sheppard was guilty. [9] The subpoena was successfully defeated with the help of First Amendment lawyer David Marburger. [10]
Neff was interviewed on the cable program, "A Crime to Remember: The Wrong Man," a retrospective look at the Marilyn Sheppard murder which aired in December, 2015, on the Investigations Discovery Channel. [11]
Neff has been a board member [12] and past president [13] of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE) from 1991 through 2002. Through IRE, he has published several "tip sheets" for investigative reporters on finding information in a hurry, backgrounding, and finding and using archival documents. [14]
In 2001, Neff became the investigations editor at the Seattle Times. [15] In March, 2016, Neff was named assistant managing editor of investigations. [16]
On June 1, 2016, Neff became the assistant managing editor for Investigations/Projects for the Philadelphia Media Network. In 2017, Neff was named deputy managing editor.
In 2016, Neff served on the jury selecting the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service reporting. [17] In 2017, Neff served as chair of the jurors selecting the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting. [18]
James Neff lives in the Philadelphia area with his family.
Mobbed Up, published by Atlantic Monthly Press (1989), won the Thomas Renner award from Investigative Reporters & Editors for the year's best reporting on organized crime. [19]
In 1996, Neff was an Edgar Award nominee for Best Fact Crime Book for Unfinished Murder. [20]
Neff was lead writer for the 18-part series, “The Terrorist Within", [21] which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2003. [22]
The Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting has been awarded since 1953, under one name or another, for a distinguished example of investigative reporting by an individual or team, presented as a single article or series in a U.S. news publication. It is administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.
Samuel Holmes Sheppard was an American neurosurgeon. He was convicted of the 1954 murder of his pregnant wife, Marilyn Reese Sheppard, but the conviction was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, which cited a "carnival atmosphere" at the trial. Sheppard was acquitted at a retrial in 1966.
Jackie Presser was an American labor leader and president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1983 until his death in 1988. He was closely connected to organized crime, and allegedly became president of the Teamsters based on the approval and support of the Cleveland Mafia. From 1972 until his death, he was also an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation concerning Mafia influence in the Teamsters union.
The Cleveland Press was a daily American newspaper published in Cleveland, Ohio from November 2, 1878, through June 17, 1982. From 1928 to 1966, the paper's editor was Louis B. Seltzer.
Michael D. Sallah is an American investigative reporter and non-fiction author who has twice been awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Hollis Jefferson Nesmith Jr. was an American journalist and author. During his time at the Dayton Daily News, he won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting with Russell Carollo for uncovering mismanagement in military healthcare.
Christopher S. Stewart is an American author and investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal, which he joined in 2011. In 2015, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative reporting with several colleagues for a series of articles exposing abuses in the Medicare system.
Scott Higham is an American investigative journalist and author who documented the corporate and political forces that fueled the opioid epidemic, in addition to conducting other major investigations. He is a five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and won the Pulitzer twice with his colleagues at The Washington Post. He is a member of The Post’s investigative unit and the co-author of two books.
Paige St. John is an American journalist with the Los Angeles Times. Before joining the Times, St. John was at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, where she earned the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. The Pulitzer was the Herald Tribune's first, "for her examination of weaknesses in the murky property-insurance system vital to Florida homeowners, providing handy data to assess insurer reliability and stirring regulatory action."
Russell John Carollo was an American Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, who worked as an investigative reporter for numerous publications, including the Dayton Daily News, the Los Angeles Times, and The Sacramento Bee.
Tom McGinty is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist known for his use and advocacy of computer-assisted reporting.
David Hasemyer is an American journalist and author. With Lisa Song and Elizabeth McGowan, he won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and a 2016 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. He graduated, in 1979, from San Diego State University, with a Bachelor's in Journalism. Hasemyer was raised in Moab, Utah.
Matt Apuzzo is an American journalist working for The New York Times.
David Freed is an American author, educator, journalist and screenwriter. Freed has written on criminal justice issues for Los Angeles Times. Freed shared the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting with fellow writers at the newspaper for reportage on the Rodney King riots in 1992.
Melvin L. Claxton is an American journalist, author, and entrepreneur. He has written about crime, corruption, and the abuse of political power. He is best known for his 1995 series of investigative reports on corruption in the criminal justice system in the U.S. Virgin Islands and its links to the region's crime rate. His series earned the Virgin Islands Daily News the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1995. Another series by Claxton, this time on the criminal justice system in Detroit, was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003. Claxton has won a number of national reporting awards and his work has been honored several times by the Associated Press managing editors. He is the founder and CEO of Epic 4D, an educational video game company.
Louis Benson Seltzer was an American journalist who was editor-in-chief of the Cleveland Press, a now-defunct daily newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1928 until his retirement in 1966. As editor of the Press, Seltzer became one of the most powerful and most well-known citizens of Cleveland, earning the nickname "Mr. Cleveland". Under Seltzer's leadership, the Press gained the largest circulation of any newspaper in Ohio and cultivated a reputation as a "fighting paper" that "fought like hell for the people".
Ronald Shelton, better known as The West Side Rapist, was an American convicted serial rapist. He was convicted of raping over 30 women in Cleveland, Ohio, over a 6-year period. He may have raped up to 50 women. Shelton was caught on video using an ATM with his victims' bank cards.
Anthony Cormier is an American journalist with BuzzFeed News, and formerly with the Tampa Bay Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Cormier was a co-recipient of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.
"An Unbelievable Story of Rape" is a 2015 article about a series of rapes in the American states of Washington and Colorado that occurred between 2008 and 2011, and the subsequent police investigations. It was a collaboration between two American, non-profit news organizations, The Marshall Project and ProPublica. The article was written by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller. It won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting and the 2015 George Polk Award for Justice Reporting.
Brian Martin Rosenthal is an American journalist. He is currently an investigative reporter at The New York Times and the President of the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), the largest network of investigative journalists in the world.
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