Wendell Lee Rawls Jr. (born August 18, 1941, in

Goodlettsville, Tennessee Goodlettsville is a city in Davidson and Sumner counties, Tennessee. Goodlettsville was incorporated as a city in 1958 with a population of just over 3,000 residents; at the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 15,921 and in 2020 the ...

) 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''.

Life

Raised in the

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

, area and in

Red Bank, Tennessee Red Bank is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 11,899 at the 2020 census . Red Bank is an enclave, being entirely surrounded by the city limits of Chattanooga. Red Bank is part of the Chattanooga, TN- GA, Metr ...

, Rawls is a graduate of

Baylor School Baylor School, commonly called Baylor, is a private, coeducational college-preparatory school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Founded in 1893, the school currently sits atop a 690-acre campus and enrolls students in grades 6-12, including boarding ...

in Chattanooga,

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

, and

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

. He is often known by the nickname "Sonny." Rawls was the first national correspondent at ''

The Philadelphia Inquirer ''The Philadelphia Inquirer'' is a daily newspaper headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The newspaper's circulation is the largest in both the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley metropolitan region of Southeastern Pennsy ...

'' (where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1977); was a Washington correspondent and then Southern Bureau chief for ''

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 ...

''; and assistant managing editor for news at ''

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger between ...

''. He also won the National Headliner Award for Outstanding Public Service, the

Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award The Robert F. Kennedy Awards for Excellence in Journalism is a journalism award named after Robert F. Kennedy and awarded by the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The annual awards are issued in several categories and were est ...

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 The Center for Public Integrity (CPI) is an American nonprofit investigative journalism organization whose stated mission is "to reveal abuses of power, corruption and dereliction of duty by powerful public and private institutions in order to ...

, an investigative nonprofit organization in

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

, 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 Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU or MT) is a public university in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Founded in 1911 as a normal school, the university consists of eight Undergraduate education, undergraduate colleges as well as a college of Postgr ...

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

, and in 2016 was inducted into the Vanderbilt Student Media Hall of Fame. He has written for magazines, motion pictures and episodic television ('' Law & Order''), and produced several television movies.

Works

*''Cold Storage'', Simon and Schuster, 1980,

References

External links

The Center for Public IntegrityCivil Rights Greensboro: Wendell Rawls, Jr.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rawls, Wendell 1941 births Living people American male journalists The Philadelphia Inquirer people Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting winners Vanderbilt University alumni Middle Tennessee State University faculty The New York Times writers American newspaper editors The Atlanta Journal-Constitution people People from Goodlettsville, Tennessee People from Red Bank, Tennessee