Stephen Engelberg

Notable work and positions

ProPublica — Editor-in-Chief (since 2013); founding Managing Editor (2008–2012)
The Oregonian — former Managing Editor (2002–2007)
The New York Times — former Investigations Editor; reporter and editor (18 years)
Pulitzer Prize Board — former member (2012–2021)

Biography

Stephen Engelberg, born in 1958, graduated from Princeton University in 1979 with an A.B. in history. Before joining The New York Times, he worked at The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Virginia, and The Dallas Morning News. Over 18 years at the Times, Engelberg reported from New York, Washington, D.C., and Warsaw, Poland, where he served as bureau chief following the collapse of communism and covered the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia; he also covered the Iran-Contra affair and later investigated the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Whitewater controversy during the Clinton administration. He shared in two George Polk Awards for his reporting, in 1989 for articles on nuclear proliferation and in 1994 for articles on U.S. immigration, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, with colleagues Adam Bryant and Matthew L. Wald, for reporting on safety regulation of commuter air travel. In 1996, Engelberg shifted his focus to editing investigative projects, becoming the founding editor of the Times' investigative unit in 2000; teams of reporters he directed there won Pulitzer Prizes in national, foreign and explanatory journalism.

Engelberg left the Times in 2002 to become managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland, where the paper won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting and was a finalist for investigative work on methamphetamine abuse and on charities intended to help people with disabilities. In 2001, he co-authored Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War with fellow Times journalists Judith Miller and William J. Broad, a New York Times bestseller examining U.S. and international biological-weapons programs.

In December 2007, ProPublica editor-in-chief Paul Steiger announced Engelberg's hiring as the nonprofit newsroom's founding managing editor, effective January 2008. Engelberg became editor-in-chief on January 1, 2013, succeeding Steiger, and now oversees a staff of more than 100 journalists. Since ProPublica's founding, it has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes, becoming the first wholly online news organization to receive the award. Engelberg was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board in May 2012 and served through 2021. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected in 2020, and received the Goldsmith Career Award from Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center in 2021.

Career highlights

1. Editor-in-Chief, ProPublica, since 2013. Leads a newsroom of more than 100 journalists that has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes, including the first ever awarded to a wholly online news organization.

2. Founding editor, New York Times investigative unit, 2000. Directed teams of reporters that won Pulitzer Prizes in national, foreign and explanatory journalism.

3. Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War, 2001. Co-authored with Judith Miller and William J. Broad; a New York Times bestseller on U.S. biological-weapons policy.

4. Pulitzer Prize Board member, 2012–2021. Served nearly a decade on the board that awards American journalism's most prestigious prize.