Walter V. Robinson

The Boston Globe

Walter Robinson has achieved virtually every high-water mark any journalist embarking on a news career would envision as the pinnacle of success. He has covered stories of every stripe with distinction, including presidential campaigns, Washington politics, conflicts overseas, and other investigative series on a par with the sexual abuse scandal. He has championed a free press and open government, and is a founding director of the New England First Amendment Coalition. He rose through the ranks from reporter to supervising editor in charge of a metro staff and, of course, the Spotlight Team. He has earned scores of awards, notable among those honors are the Pulitzer, the Yankee Quill Award, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Selden Ring Award, and the Worth Bingham Prize. While teaching at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, he inaugurated an investigative reporting course. The class’s first success, exposing disability pension abuse in the Boston Fire Department, prompted a federal investigation.