The Great Unknown Reporter

She may be one of the best journalists in America and you have probably never heard of her. She scored an unusual “triple” in awards this year for her work. Two of the highest honors in journalism and a salute from a national organization exposing political corruption. She did it by taking on the governor of her state and, even more challenging, one of the most famous football stars in her state… a state better known for “bluegrass music… magnolias… and Southern hospitality.”

Her name... Anna Wolfe...a reporter for Mississippi Today...
a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom.
 
Her newsroom won over such prestigious journalists and news 
organizationslike The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times
and many, many more.
 
It puts her alongside some of most famous names in journalism such as 
PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff.

(Woodruff, who recently stepped down as anchor of the NewsHour, was recognized with the Goldsmith Award for Excellence in Journalism. It’s given by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard to “honor public service journalism that has an impact on United States public policy and the functioning of government.”)

Wolfe won the Goldsmith Award for Investigative Reporting for her series on corruption in Mississippi’s federal welfare system titled “The Backchannel.” It was the second time she’s won this award.

This year’s winner for her was an investigative series prompted by a statistic Wolfe saw that showed only 1.5% of the families that applied for federal welfare assistance got help. She wanted to find out why. That led to a year-long investigation that showed that then governor Phil Bryant was funneling the money to family and friends — friends like former NFL quarterback Brett Favre.

That same series of investigations was cited as the reason for her winning the Nellie Bly Award given out by the Museum of Political Corruption for her “tenacious reporting… exposing the biggest case of fraud in Mississippi government’s history.” The people cited in her report have pleaded guilty and the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office have launched investigations

The award’s namesake Nellie Bly was described as “a force to be reckoned with.” 
She She was the first woman to report from the actual trenches of war during World War I...
flew around the world to prove that women could do anything men could do... 
uncovered the abuse of women by male police officers...exposed an employment 
agencythat was stealing from immigrants and exposed corrupt politicians. She
even went undercover in a factory to expore cruel working conditions and in an
insane asylum to expose the physical and mental mistreatment of patients.

Coincidentally Nellie Bly’s story was produced for the New York World whose publisher was Joseph Pulitzer, for whom the famous Pulitzer Prizes is named. And that is Anna Wolfe’s next award. In the category of local reporting that report on the federal welfare fraud won a Pulitzer Prize “for distinguished coverage of significant issues of local or statewide concern, demonstrating originality and community connection, using any available journalistic tool.”

Her co-winner was from the neighboring state of Alabama where an investigation by four reporters working for AL.com exposed how the “police force in the town of Brookside preyed on residents to inflate revenue.” Kyle Whitmire also with AL.com won a Pulitzer for commentary.

In its story about her win, the editor-in-chief for Mississippi Today, Adam Ganucheau, wrote that she had put a lot of “heart and energy” into five years of “difficult, emotionally draining work.” And always, he said, she was centered on the people who needed and were entitled to help. It was “their stories that guided her reporting.”