Debbie Cenziper

Reporter

Photo of Debbie Cenziper

Debbie Cenziper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and nonfiction author who writes for ProPublica’s national desk. She spent more than a decade at The Washington Post.

Over 30 years, Cenziper’s stories have changed laws, prompted congressional and FBI investigations, and helped secure more funding for affordable housing, mental health care and public schools.

She has won dozens of awards in American print journalism, including the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting about corrupt affordable housing developers in Miami. She was a Pulitzer finalist in 2006 for a series about breakdowns in the nation’s hurricane-warning system.

Cenziper was one of the lead reporters at The Washington Post on the award-winning Pandora Papers, a 2021 investigation about the secret movement of wealth around the world. In 2022, while at ProPublica, she co-authored “Shadow Diplomats,” an investigation about troubled volunteer diplomats that has spurred reforms in nine countries.

She is the author of “Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler’s Hidden Soldiers in America,” and “Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality,” named one of the most notable books of the year by The Washington Post.

Cenziper is a professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

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