Kimbriell Kelly is an American journalist and expert on public records requests, currently working as Washington Bureau Chief for the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''. She is a former

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...

-winning investigative reporter at the ''Washington Post''.

Early life

Kelly is originally from the Chicago area and is a 1997 graduate of Saint Xavier University as well as a 1998 graduate of Boston University.

Career

Kelly began her career at the Daily Herald and subsequently the Chicago Reporter. While in Illinois, Kelly hosted a public-affairs show on

WFLD WFLD (channel 32) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is owned and operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox network through its Fox Television Stations division alongside Gary, Indiana–licensed WPWR-TV (channe ...

-Channel 32 and a weekly radio show on Chicago Public Media

WBEZ WBEZ (91.5 FM) – branded ''WBEZ 91.5'' – is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to Chicago, Illinois, and primarily serving the tri-state region of the Chicago metropolitan area. It is owned by Chicago Public Media and is f ...

91.5-FM. Kelly then worked in Washington, DC as an investigative reporter at the ''Washington Post,'' where she became an expert in public records requests and Freedom of Information Act requests. In 2019, Kelly left the ''Post'' to become the deputy editor for Enterprise and Investigations in the Washington Bureau of the ''Los Angeles Times''. In that role, Kelly lead a team of five reporters focused on policy and issues of public record. Kelly is currently the Times' Washington Bureau Chief. Kelly is also a visiting lecturer in the Humanities Council and Ferris professor of journalism at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

Fatal Force project

While at the ''Post'', Kelly worked on the "Fatal Force" project, a database that tracked 990 police shootings in 2015. At the time, neither the federal government nor state governments had comprehensive, nationwide data on police killings. Drawing on databases put together by nonprofit groups as well as local newspaper reports, law enforcement websites and social media, Lowery and colleagues built out the Post's Fatal Force database. Kelly was one of 70 staffers from multiple departments assembled the database and compiled stories, photos, data, graphics, and videos about trends revealed by the information. The Post has continued to update its database since its founding.

Pulitzer Prize

The Fatal Force project, on which Kelly was one of the lead authors (also see Wesley Lowery), won the

Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting This Pulitzer Prize has been awarded since 1942 for a distinguished example of reporting on national affairs in the United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily ...

in 2016, and the

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announced a pilot program to begin collecting a more comprehensive set of use-of-force statistics in 2017. Kelly found out about the 2016 win when she was on her honeymoon in

Aruba Aruba, officially the Country of Aruba, is a constituent island country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, in the southern Caribbean Sea north of the Venezuelan peninsula of Paraguaná Peninsula, Paraguaná and northwest of Curaçao. In 19 ...

. She coauthored the first story in the series and did the necessary data analysis of two decades of police prosecutions. Kelly explained that the project "raised greater accountability in how statistics nationally are kept and prompted an overhaul of those efforts. I’m proud that I got to be a part of something that makes a difference."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelly, Kimbriell Living people African-American women journalists African-American journalists 21st-century American non-fiction writers Los Angeles Times people Boston University alumni American women non-fiction writers 21st-century American women writers Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century African-American women writers 21st-century African-American writers