Fields briefed journalists in January 2024: Race And Crime Reporting: Communities Of Color Disproportionately Represented. 

A graduate of Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Gary Fields is an award-winning journalist with more than 40 years of journalism and communications experience, including 30 years at The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal and USA TODAY. Fields contributed articles on the events of September 11, 2001, earning the Journal a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for Breaking News coverage. Among his distinguished recognitions, in 2023 he was named a Louisiana Legend by the Louisiana Public Broadcast in 2023. He is a past winner of the National Association of Black Journalists Journalist of the Year Award.

Gary is a member of Northwestern State’s Long Purple Line Hall of Distinction and a 2023 inductee into Northwestern’s inaugural Class of Distinguished Journalism Professionals. He has won a number of other journalism awards, including the Thurgood Marshall Award and the Edgar A. Poe Award for the White House Correspondents.

Gary hails from Alexandria, Louisiana and attended Southern University in Baton Rouge and LSU Alexandria before finishing his final two years at NSU where he holds an undergraduate degree in Broadcast and an MA in English. He has served on the board of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Investigative Reporters and Editors Inc.,

Fields has served on the board of directors of the Lutheran Church of St. Andrew in Maryland and he has been a foster parent in Maryland. He and his wife Helen live in Maryland and have three daughters. He is papa to three grandchildren.