Paul Steiger

2013 CPJ Burton Benjamin Memorial Awardee

Paul Steiger is president and editor-in-chief of ProPublica, a New York-based non-profit newsroom focused on investigative journalism, a position he assumed beginning January 2008. Steiger was previously editor-at-large at The Wall Street Journal, having stepped down in May 2007 from a 15-year stint as managing editor and vice president of Dow Jones & Company. Steiger joined the Journal in 1966 as a reporter in the San Francisco bureau. In 1968, he moved to the Los Angeles Times as a staff writer and in 1971 he transferred to that paper’s Washington, D.C. bureau as an economic correspondent. He returned to Los Angeles in 1978 to serve as the Times’ business editor.

In 1983, Steiger rejoined the Journal as an assistant managing editor in New York and became deputy managing editor in April 1985. He was appointed managing editor in June 1991 and became a vice president in May 1992. Under his leadership, The Wall Street Journal‘s reporters and editors won numerous Pulitzer Prizes. Editors and news staffs of the European and Asian Journals began reporting to him in July 2002.

Steiger was elected chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2005. The same year, Steiger was honored with the “Decade of Excellence” award from the World Leadership Forum.

In November 2007, the National Press Club awarded Steiger the Fourth Estate Award, its highest honor, for “a lifetime of contributions to American journalism.” In 2002, Steiger was selected as the first recipient of the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Leadership Award, honoring more than a decade of leadership at The Wall Street Journal. The John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA honored him with the 2002 Gerald Loeb Award for lifetime achievement. Also in 2002, he was awarded the Columbia Journalism Award, given to honor a “singular journalistic performance in the public interest,” and the highest honor awarded by the Columbia University School of Journalism. He was named a 2001-02 Poynter Fellow by Yale University.

The National Press Foundation awarded him the 2001 George Beveridge Editor of the Year Award for qualities that produce excellence in media. In March 1999, he was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board. Steiger won three Gerald Loeb Awards and two John Hancock awards for his economics and business coverage. He is co-author of the book, The ’70s Crash and How to Survive It, published in 1970.

Born in New York City, Steiger graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

To read Steiger’s acceptance speech, click here.