WASHINGTON - December 19 - Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist Wendell Rawls Jr. has been named Managing Director of The Center for Public Integrity, the Center's Executive Director Roberta Baskin announced today.

Rawls, a veteran reporter and editor, joined the Center in August, 2005, as director of the Center's International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. As Managing Director, Rawls will be responsible for all editorial and publishing operations at the Center.

Baskin said she was honored to have Rawls take on an expanded role at the Center.

"Sonny Rawls is an investigative reporting legend. His leadership will push our watchdog work to an even higher plateau," Baskin said.

In addition to the Pulitzer Prize he won as a reporter, Rawls was a Pulitzer finalist and four-time Pulitzer nominee. In the two years he was an editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the newspaper won two Pulitzer Prizes and had five finalists. He also has won a number of other awards including the National Headliner Award for Outstanding Public Service, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award Grand Prize and the Heywood Broun Journalism Award.

Rawls said he plans to bring additional seasoned journalists into the Center, install new and more thorough data-handling processes and encourage more on-the-ground investigative reporting, both in the United States and abroad.

"I believe deeply in the mission of the Center to do the kind of in-depth journalism other organizations cannot or will not do," he said. "We are committed to helping our fellow citizens of the world become better informed and better equipped to hold their governments and other institutions accountable."

Rawls' career spans more than 35 years in journalism and media, beginning in 1967 at The Nashville Tennessean. He was the first national correspondent at The Philadelphia Inquirer; was a Washington correspondent and then Southern Bureau chief of The New York Times, and served as assistant managing editor for news at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He is the author of one book, Cold Storage, has written for magazines, motion pictures and episodic television (Law & Order) and produced several television movies. Before joining the Center, he was a professor in the School of Journalism at Middle Tennessee State University, where he occupied the Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies.

The Center for Public Integrity conducts investigative research and reporting on public policy issues in the United States and around the world. Through objective and thorough analyses, the Center hopes to serve as an honest broker of information and to inspire a better-informed citizenry that can demand a higher level of accountability from its government and elected leaders. Since 1990, the Center, an independent, non-profit organization, has released more than 275 investigative reports and 14 books. In just the past eight years the Center has been honored more than 30 times by, among others, PEN USA, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Society of Professional Journalists and The George Polk Award.

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