Chris Adams joined the National Press Foundation in 2015 after more than 25 years as an investigative, political and business reporter and editor.
He worked for the McClatchy and Knight-Ridder Washington bureaus; The Wall Street Journal’s Pittsburgh and Washington bureaus; and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. He covered everything from the steel industry, to Wall Street insider trading cases, to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, to chimpanzee research, to widespread Medicaid fraud, to a small-town sheriff. He was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize three times (2010, 1999 and 1996), and in 2000 was part of a six-person Journal team that won the Pulitzer for coverage of military spending issues.
He has won several other honors, including those from the National Press Club (three times), the Gerald Loeb Award for outstanding business reporting (twice), the National Headliner Award, the George Polk Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, the Clark Mollenhoff Award, an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award, the Livingston Award, the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for best Washington reporting, and the Society of Professional Journalists Award for best Washington reporting.
He teaches journalism at American University in Washington and also has taught at Northwestern University’s D.C. program.