Wesley Lowery
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Wesley Lowery (born 1990) is an American journalist who has worked at both CBS News and ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
''. He was a lead on the ''Post'''s "Fatal Force" project that 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. In its first six years (1942–1947), it was called the Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting – National. Li ...
in 2016 as well as the author of ''They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement'' (
Little, Brown Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown (publisher), James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Ear ...
, 2016). In 2017, he became a
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political contributor and in 2020 was announced as a correspondent for ''60 in 6'', a short-form spinoff of '' 60 Minutes'' for
Quibi Quibi ( ) was a short-lived American short-form streaming platform that generated content for viewing on mobile devices. It was founded in Los Angeles in August 2018 as NewTV by Jeffrey Katzenberg and was led by Meg Whitman, its CEO. The serv ...
. Lowery is a former Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service.


Early life

Lowery attended Shaker Heights High School and
Ohio University Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subseq ...
. During college, Lowery was editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, '' The Post'', and interned at ''
The Detroit News ''The Detroit News'' is one of the two major newspapers in the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan. The paper began in 1873, when it rented space in the rival ''Detroit Free Press'' building. ''The News'' absorbed the ''Detroit Tribune'' on Februar ...
'', ''
The Columbus Dispatch ''The Columbus Dispatch'' is a daily newspaper based in Columbus, Ohio. Its first issue was published on July 1, 1871, and it has been the only mainstream daily newspaper in the city since ''The Columbus Citizen-Journal'' ceased publication in 19 ...
'', and ''
The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''.


Career

Lowery was a reporting fellow at the ''
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'', then moved to the ''
Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'', becoming a general assignment political reporter in 2013 and covered topics including the murder trial of the NFL's
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, Boston's mayoral race, and the manhunt for the Boston marathon bombers. In 2014, the
National Association of Black Journalists The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) is an organization of African-American journalists, students, and media professionals. Founded in 1975 in Washington, D.C., by 44 journalists, the NABJ's stated purpose is to provide quality p ...
named Lowery "Emerging Journalist of the Year". Lowery moved to ''The Washington Post'' in 2014; '' The Washingtonian'' described him in 2015 as the paper's "rising star...a terrific reporter" with a track record for "establishing deep sources, writing colorful solo pieces, and contributing to team coverage." Lowery has served as a judge for the
American Mosaic Journalism Prize The American Mosaic Journalism Prize is a journalism prize awarded annually to two freelance journalists "for excellence in long-form, narrative, or deep reporting on stories about underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the present Ame ...
each year from 2018-2022.


Ferguson coverage and arrest

In August 2014, Lowery covered the Ferguson protests for ''The Post''. On August 13, Lowery and '' Huffington Post'' reporter Ryan Reilly were arrested in a
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. Journalism groups as well as Lowery's and Reilly's employers condemned the arrests, saying they were, as the ''
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'' characterized it, "deliberate and unjustifiable attempts to interfere with the press." A year later, shortly before the statute of limitations was set to expire, St. Louis County prosecutors charged Lowery and Reilly with trespassing and interfering with a police officer. In May 2016, prosecutors dropped all charges against Reilly and Lowery in exchange for an agreement that the reporters would not sue the county.


Fatal Force project

Lowery was a lead (also see Kimbriell Kelly), on the ''Post'''s "Fatal Force" project, a database that tracked 990 police shootings in 2015. At the time, the federal government had no comprehensive, nationwide data on police killings; the most systematic data available came from databases compiled by independent, grassroots organizations like Fatal Encounters, Stolen Lives Project, Operation Ghetto Storm, and Killed by Police. Drawing on these databases as well as local newspaper reports, law enforcement websites and social media, Lowery and colleagues built out the Post's Fatal Force database. The project 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. In its first six years (1942–1947), it was called the Pulitzer Prize for Telegraphic Reporting – National. Li ...
in 2016, and the Justice Department announced a pilot program to begin collecting a more comprehensive set of use-of-force statistics in 2017.


''They Can't Kill Us All''

Lowery's first book ''They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement'' was published November 15, 2016 by
Little, Brown Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown (publisher), James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Ear ...
. The book describes the
Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police br ...
movement in the context of U.S. history as well as Lowery's personal history. ''
The Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington ...
'' listed it as among the fall releases they "can't wait to read". ''The Boston Globe'' said Lowery "offers fresh insights into what it means to cover a broad national story about race in a rigorous and sustained way." Noting that Lowery wrote the book at 25, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' said, "His book is electric, because it is so well reported, so plainly told and so evidently the work of a man who has not grown a callus on his heart." Lowery won the 2017 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose from the ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prizes for ''They Can't Kill Us All''. In January 2022, it was reported that
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will be adapting the book into a television series. The project will produced by Brad Weston's production company Makeready, with
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, Weston and Lowery as executive producers.


Quibi

Lowery joined CBS News in 2020. It was speculated that part of the reason for Lowery's departure from ''The Washington Post'' was that he was unhappy with the newspaper's
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for its journalists, which discouraged some of his more provocative comments on Twitter and elsewhere; Lowery had clashed with the managing editors before on content in his tweets. At CBS News, he works on ''60 in 6'', a shorter six-minute spinoff of '' 60 Minutes'' for
Quibi Quibi ( ) was a short-lived American short-form streaming platform that generated content for viewing on mobile devices. It was founded in Los Angeles in August 2018 as NewTV by Jeffrey Katzenberg and was led by Meg Whitman, its CEO. The serv ...
.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lowery, Wesley Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting winners The Washington Post people CBS News people Ohio University alumni Living people Place of birth missing (living people) 1990 births People from Shaker Heights, Ohio African-American journalists 21st-century African-American people