Margaret Engel is director of the Alicia Patterson Foundation. She also serves on the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and chairs the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. She is a former Nieman Fellow and former managing editor of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Previously, Margaret was an editor and reporter for The Washington Post and a reporter for The Des Moines Register. She is co-author of “Red Hot Patriot,” a one-woman show based on the writings of Molly Ivins; and of “Ballpark Vacations: Great Family Trips to Minor League and Classic Major League Ballparks Across America” and “Food Finds: America’s Best Local Foods and the People Who Produce Them.”
Charles Lewis is a distinguished journalist in residence and the founding executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University School of Communication in Washington, D.C. A national investigative journalist for nearly 30 years, Charles has founded or co-founded four non-profit enterprises in Washington, including the Center for Public Integrity. He started the Center after a successful career as a producer for ABC News and the CBS News program “60 Minutes.” Under his leadership, from 1989 to 2005, the Center published about 300 investigations, including 14 books, and was honored more than 30 times by national journalism organizations. Charles is co-author of five books, including national bestseller “The Buying of the President 2004.” He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998, received the PEN USA First Amendment award in 2004 and was a Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University in spring 2006.
Vernon Loeb is deputy managing editor for news and multimedia at The Philadelphia Inquirer and a veteran investigative reporter and editor. He began his career at the newspaper in 1978 and rose through the reporting ranks over the next 16 years, serving as Southeast Asia correspondent and city hall bureau chief. In 1994, Vernon joined The Washington Post as a city reporter covering D.C. Mayor Marion Barry. Later, he moved to the Post’s national staff, where he served as a correspondent for both national security and the Pentagon. He left the Post in 2004 to become California investigations editor at the Los Angeles Times, a position he held until returning to Philadelphia in 2007. In addition to his newsroom duties, Vernon teaches investigative reporting at Temple University.
William K. Marimow is editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, leading the newsroom where he won Pulitzer Prize in 1978 for public service and in 1985 for investigative reporting. After leaving the paper in 1993, he became editor of the Baltimore Sun and later vice president for news at National Public Radio before returning to The Inquirer in 2006.
Henry Weinstein is a professor of the practice of law and a senior lecturer in literary journalism at the University of California, Irvine. In addition to being a lawyer, he was a journalist for nearly 40 years, including 30 at the Los Angeles Times, where he covered local and national politics, labor and law. During that time, Henry was often recognized for journalistic achievement, including the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, which the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism presents annually to a journalist “whose reporting over time shows courage, integrity, curiosity and intelligence and epitomizes the role of journalism in a free society.” He was one of the founders of the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, Calif., and currently is serving on a committee of the California State Bar Association that is seeking to enhance legal representation for low-income people in civil cases.
