April 16, 2007
Birmingham News reporter Brett Blackledge won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Journalism on April 16, 2007. Blackledge attended Woodlawn High School in Birmingham and earned a B.A. in journalism at Louisiana State University in 1986. He went to work in New Orleans with the Associated Press. He later moved to AP bureaus in Jackson, Mississippi, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, before taking a job with The Journal in the Washington, D.C. area. In 1993, Blackledge returned to Alabama, serving as a local government reporter at the Mobile Register. In 1998, he moved to The Birmingham News, covering general assignments and special projects. Blackledge’s investigation into wrongdoing in the Alabama two-year college system resulted in a string of front-page stories beginning in April 2006. For exposing the scandal, Blackledge was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting on April 16, 2007.
Read more at The Pulitzer Prizes.
For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.