Wendell Lee Rawls Jr. (born August 18, 1941, in Goodlettsville, Tennessee) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and editor. His career spans 40 years in journalism and media, beginning in 1967 at The (Nashville) Tennessean . [1]
Raised in the Nashville, Tennessee, area and in Red Bank, Tennessee, Rawls is a graduate of Baylor School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Vanderbilt University. He is often known by the nickname "Sonny."
Rawls was the first national correspondent at The Philadelphia Inquirer (where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting [2] in 1977); was a Washington correspondent and then Southern Bureau chief for The New York Times ; [3] and assistant managing editor for news at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution . He also won the National Headliner Award for Outstanding Public Service, the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize, the Heywood Broun Journalism Award, and several other awards. While he was an editor in Atlanta, his staff produced a Pulitzer Prize winner, and four additional Pulitzer Prize finalists in two years.
In 2005, he became managing director of the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., and in May 2006 became its executive director before returning to teaching.
Rawls was a professor in the School of Journalism at Middle Tennessee State University from 2000 until his retirement in 2015, and occupied the Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies at MTSU in 2001. In 2009, he taught at Vanderbilt University, [4] and in 2016 was inducted into the Vanderbilt Student Media Hall of Fame. [5]
He has written for magazines, motion pictures and episodic television ( Law & Order ), and produced several television movies.
The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications is a constituent school of Northwestern University that offers both undergraduate and graduate programs. It frequently ranks as the top school of journalism in the United States. Medill alumni include over 40 Pulitzer Prize laureates, numerous national correspondents for major networks, many well-known reporters, columnists and media executives.
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.
The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to counter the corrosive effects of inequality by holding powerful interests accountable and equipping the public with knowledge to drive change." It won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, and in 2023, the Edward R. Murrow Award for General Excellence.
Ralph Emerson McGill was an American journalist and editorialist. An anti-segregationist editor, he published the Atlanta Constitution newspaper. He was a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors, serving from 1945 to 1968. He won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 1959.
Jimmie Lee Hoagland is a Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist. He is a contributing editor to The Washington Post, since 2010, previously serving as an associate editor, senior foreign correspondent, and columnist.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune is a daily newspaper, located in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1925 as the Sarasota Herald.
Thomas M. French is an American writer and journalist.
Alex S. Jones is an American journalist who was director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government from July 1, 2000 until June 2015. He won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1987.
The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication is a constituent college of the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, United States. Established in 1915, Grady College offers undergraduate degrees in journalism, advertising, public relations, and entertainment and media studies, and master's and doctoral programs of study. Grady has consistently been ranked among the top schools of journalism education and research in the U.S.
R. Jeffrey Smith is a managing director of RosettiStarr LLC, a corporate security and intelligence firm, where he leads investigative work and conducts corporate risk analysis for attorneys, management teams, and investors worldwide. Its clients include corporate enterprises with global operations major private equity firms and hedge funds with a combined $650 billion in assets under management. He joined Rosetti Starr in November 2021.
Leonard "Len" Downie Jr. is an American journalist who was executive editor of The Washington Post from 1991 to 2008. He worked in the Post newsroom for 44 years. His roles at the newspaper included executive editor, managing editor, national editor, London correspondent, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news, deputy metropolitan editor, and investigative and local reporter. Downie became executive editor upon the retirement of Ben Bradlee. During Downie's tenure as executive editor, the Washington Post won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper had won during the term of a single executive editor. Downie currently serves as vice president at large at the Washington Post, as Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and as a member of several advisory boards associated with journalism and public affairs.
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.
Eugene Leslie Roberts Jr. is an American journalist and professor of journalism. He has been a national editor of The New York Times, executive editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1972 to 1990, and managing editor of The New York Times from 1994 to 1997. Roberts is most known for presiding over The Inquirer's "Golden Age", a time in which the newspaper was given increased freedom and resources, won 17 Pulitzer Prizes in 18 years, displaced The Philadelphia Bulletin as the city's "paper of record", and was considered to be Knight Ridder's crown jewel as a profitable enterprise and an influential regional paper.
Richard A. Oppel is an American newspaper, magazine and digital editor living in Austin, Texas. He was interim editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly, an Austin-based publication with a statewide readership of 2.4 million. The magazine covers the Texas scene, from politics, the environment, industry and education to music, the arts, travel, restaurants, museums and cultural events. While Oppel was editor of The Charlotte Observer (1978–1993), the newspaper earned three Pulitzer Prizes, sharing one for editorial cartoons with The Atlanta Constitution.
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.
The Investigative Reporting Workshop is a nonprofit, editorially independent newsroom based at American University in Washington, D.C. in that trains undergraduate, graduate student and early career journalists by pairing them with professional newsrooms on investigative, enterprise and data journalism projects. Since its founding, the IRW has partnered with dozens of professional newsrooms on hundreds of investigations, and trained more than 240 student journalists -- many of whom now work in leading newsrooms across the country.
James Sandler is an American investigative journalist who was part of the New York Times team that won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and on PBS Frontline.
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.
Andrew Maraniss is an American author, best known for his book, "Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the collision of race and sports in the south", depicting Perry Wallace, the first African-American to play college basketball under an athletic scholarship in the Southeastern Conference in the 1960s. The book was on the New York Times best-seller list in both the sports and civil rights categories for four consecutive months. It received the 2015 Lillian Smith Book Award and a Special Recognition Award by the Robert F. Kennedy Book Awards Foundation.
Lisa Song is an American journalist and author. She won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, with David Hasemyer and Elizabeth McGowan, for their report on the Kalamazoo River oil spill. She works for ProPublica, reporting on the environment, energy and climate change.