Ken Ward Jr. is a former staff reporter for the ''

Charleston Gazette-Mail The ''Charleston Gazette-Mail'' is the only daily morning newspaper in Charleston, West Virginia. It is the product of a July 2015 merger between ''The Charleston Gazette'' and the ''Charleston Daily Mail''. The paper is one of nine owned by HD ...

'' and writes about the coal mining industry and its impacts on Appalachian communities. He is chairman of the

Society of Environmental Journalists The Society of Environmental Journalists is a non-profit national journalism organization created by and for journalists who report environmental topics in the news media. On its website, the organization says that "SEJ’s mission is to strength ...

First Amendment Task Force, founded in 2002 "to address freedom-of-information, right-to-know, and other news gathering issues of concern to the pursuit of environmental journalism." He announced on Monday, February 24, that this would be his last day.

Personal

Ward is a native of

Mineral County, West Virginia Mineral County is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is part of the Cumberland, MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 census, the population was 26,938. Its county seat is Keyser. The county was founded in 1866. Hi ...

. He obtained his degree from

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State College ...

Career

He began working at the ''Charleston Gazette'' in 1991. His work has focused on mine safety,

mountaintop removal Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), also known as mountaintop mining (MTM), is a form of surface mining at the summit or summit ridge of a mountain. Coal seams are extracted from a mountain by removing the land, or overburden, above the seams. Thi ...

, environmental and labor issues. He has covered the

Sago Sago () is a starch extracted from the pith, or spongy core tissue, of various tropical palm stems, especially those of ''Metroxylon sagu''. It is a major staple food for the lowland peoples of New Guinea and the Maluku Islands, where it is ...

and the

Upper Big Branch Mine disaster The Upper Big Branch Mine disaster occurred on April 5, 2010 roughly underground in Raleigh County, West Virginia at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine located in Montcoal. Twenty-nine out of thirty-one miners at the site were killed ...

s that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners.

Honors and awards

Ward won an

Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship The Alicia Patterson Foundation (APF) program was established in 1965 in memory of Alicia Patterson Alicia Patterson (October 15, 1906 – July 2, 1963) was an American journalist, the founder and editor of ''Newsday''. With Neysa McMein, she cre ...

in 2006 to research and write about mining deaths in the coal industry. He is also a three-time winner of the

Scripps Howard Foundation The Scripps Howard Fund is a public charity that supports philanthropic causes important to the E. W. Scripps Company, an American media conglomerate which owns television stations, cable television networks, and other media outlets. The goal of t ...

's Edward J. Meeman Award for his environmental reporting and won the

Livingston Award for Young Journalists The Livingston Awards at the University of Michigan are American journalism awards issued to media professionals under the age of 35 for local, national, and international reporting. They are the largest, all-media, general reporting prizes in Ame ...

in 2000. His work and research on coal mine issues as an Alicia Patterson Fellow earned him an Investigative Reporters and Editors medal. In October 2018, Ward was named a

MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 ind ...

(popularly known as "Genius Grants") by the

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private foundation that makes grants and impact investments to support non-profit organizations in approximately 50 countries around the world. It has an endowment of $7.0 billion and p ...

. Ward is the first MacArthur Fellow to be living in West Virginia at the time of their award; the three previous recipients from West Virginia had moved away.

References

External links

Column Archives
at ''

''
Column Archives
at

ProPublica ProPublica (), legally Pro Publica, Inc., is a nonprofit organization based in New York City. In 2010, it became the first online news source to win a Pulitzer Prize, for a piece written by one of its journalists''The Guardian'', April 13, 2010P ...

* Living people People from Mineral County, West Virginia West Virginia University alumni American male journalists MacArthur Fellows Year of birth missing (living people) Livingston Award winners for National Reporting {{US-journalist-20thC-stub

Personal

Career

Honors and awards

See also

References

External links