While working for The Toledo Blade, he received numerous state and national awards for his investigative stories into organized crime, clerical sexual abuse and white-collar fraud. He was named Best Reporter in Ohio in 2002 by the Society of Professional Journalists.[1]
He became an investigative reporter and editor at the Miami Herald, where he directed numerous projects including a series on public housing corruption[3] that won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting.[4]
He was a Pulitzer finalist for meritorious Public Service in 2012 for a series exposing wretched and deadly conditions in Florida's assisted living facilities.[5] He worked two years at The Washington Post, and returned in 2014 to The Miami Herald, where he was a Pulitzer finalist for Local Reporting in 2016 for stories that exposed a corrupt police sting operation that laundered $71.5 million for drug cartels—kept millions in profits—but did not make a single arrest.[citation needed] He has received other national awards for his work in accountability journalism, including The IRE Medal, a Gerald Loeb Award,[6] a Heywood Broun Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award.
With Mitch Weiss. The Yankee Comandante: The Untold Story of Courage, Passion, and One American's Fight to Liberate Cuba. Lyons Press, 2015. ISBN0762792876
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, No Edition Time from 1953–1963 and the Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting from 1964–1984
