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Wesley Lowery

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Wesley Lowery
EducationOhio University
OccupationJournalist
EmployerFreelance
Notable work"Fatal Force" project;
They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement
AwardsPulitzer Prize for National Reporting (2016)
Websitewww.washingtonpost.com/people/wesley-lowery

Wesley Lowery (born 1990) is an American journalist who has worked at both CBS News and The Washington Post.[1] He was a lead on the Post's "Fatal Force" project that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 as well as the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement (Little, Brown, 2016). In 2017, he became a CNN political contributor and in 2020 was announced as a correspondent for 60 in 6, a short-form spinoff of 60 Minutes for Quibi.[2][3] Lowery is a former Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute of Politics and Public Service.

Early life

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Lowery attended Shaker Heights High School and Ohio University.[4] During college, Lowery was editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, The Post, and interned at The Detroit News, The Columbus Dispatch, and The Wall Street Journal.[5]

Career

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Lowery was a reporting fellow at the Los Angeles Times, then moved to the Boston Globe, becoming a general assignment political reporter in 2013[6] and covered topics including the murder trial of the NFL's Aaron Hernandez, Boston's mayoral race, and the manhunt for the Boston marathon bombers.[7]

In 2014, the National Association of Black Journalists named Lowery "Emerging Journalist of the Year".[8] Lowery moved to The Washington Post in 2014; The Washingtonian described him in 2015 as the paper's "rising star...a terrific reporter" with a track record for "establishing deep sources, writing colorful solo pieces, and contributing to team coverage."[7] Lowery has served as a judge for the American Mosaic Journalism Prize each year from 2018-2024.[9][10][11]

Ferguson coverage and arrest

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In August 2014, Lowery covered the Ferguson protests for The Post. On August 13, Lowery and Huffington Post reporter Ryan Reilly were arrested in a McDonald's. Journalism groups as well as Lowery's and Reilly's employers condemned the arrests, saying they were, as the Columbia Journalism Review characterized it, "deliberate and unjustifiable attempts to interfere with the press."[12] A year later, shortly before the statute of limitations was set to expire, St. Louis County prosecutors charged Lowery and Reilly with trespassing and interfering with a police officer.[13] In May 2016, prosecutors dropped all charges against Reilly and Lowery in exchange for an agreement that the reporters would not sue the county.[14]

Fatal Force project

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Lowery was a lead (also see Kimbriell Kelly), on the Post's "Fatal Force" project,[15][16] a database that tracked 990 police shootings in 2015.[17] At the time, the federal government had no comprehensive, nationwide data on police killings;[18] the most systematic data available came from databases compiled by independent, grassroots organizations like Fatal Encounters, Stolen Lives Project, Operation Ghetto Storm, and Killed by Police.[19] Drawing on these databases as well as local newspaper reports, law enforcement websites and social media, Lowery and colleagues built out the Post's Fatal Force database. The project won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016,[20] and the Justice Department announced a pilot program to begin collecting a more comprehensive set of use-of-force statistics in 2017.[21]

They Can't Kill Us All

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Lowery's first book They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement was published November 15, 2016 by Little, Brown.[22] The book describes the Black Lives Matter movement in the context of U.S. history as well as Lowery's personal history. The Seattle Times listed it as among the fall releases they "can't wait to read".[23] The Boston Globe said Lowery "offers fresh insights into what it means to cover a broad national story about race in a rigorous and sustained way."[24] Noting that Lowery wrote the book at 25, The New York Times said, "His book is electric, because it is so well reported, so plainly told and so evidently the work of a man who has not grown a callus on his heart."[25]

Lowery won the 2017 Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes for They Can't Kill Us All.[26][27] In January 2022, it was reported that AMC will be adapting the book into a television series. The project will be produced by Brad Weston's production company Makeready, with Don Cheadle, Weston and Lowery as executive producers.[28]

Quibi

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Lowery joined CBS News in 2020. It was speculated that part of the reason for Lowery's departure from The Washington Post was that he was unhappy with the newspaper's social media policy for its journalists, which discouraged some of his more provocative comments on Twitter and elsewhere; Lowery had clashed with the managing editors before on content in his tweets.[29] At CBS News, he worked on 60 in 6, a shorter six-minute spinoff of 60 Minutes for Quibi.[3]

American University

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On June 26, 2023, American University announced that Lowery would join the faculty of American University School of Communication as an associate professor of investigative journalism. There, he will also be the executive editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop, an independent newsroom based at American University.[30]

References

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  1. ^ Smith, Ben (7 June 2020). "Inside the Revolts Erupting in America's Big Newsrooms". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2021-01-27. Retrieved 2021-02-01.
  2. ^ "Politics Staff Additions at CNN". Cision Media Research. January 19, 2017. Archived from the original on April 19, 2017. Retrieved April 19, 2017.
  3. ^ a b "Wesley Lowery to Join '60 Minutes'-Quibi Project '60 in 6′ – Deadline". 28 January 2020. Archived from the original on 2021-01-26. Retrieved 2021-02-01.
  4. ^ Morona, Joey (April 19, 2016). "Shaker Heights grad Wesley Lowery wins Pulitzer Prize at 25". Cleveland.com. Archived from the original on 16 September 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
  5. ^ Beaujon, Andrew (3 January 2014). "Boston Globe's Wesley Lowery joins Washington Post". Poynter. Archived from the original on 22 August 2016. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
  6. ^ Tutwiler, Patrick (January 3, 2014). "Wesley Lowery Leaves Boston Globe for WaPo". Fishbowl DC. Archived from the original on 1 February 2021. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
  7. ^ a b Beaujon, Andrew (2 June 2015). "Why Does Everyone Want Wesley Lowery to Shut Up?". Washingtonian. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 26 October 2016.
  8. ^ Becker, George (May 30, 2014). "Reporting his way to recognition: Shaker Traces". Cleveland Plain Dealer. Archived from the original on 1 February 2021. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  9. ^ Lowery, Wesley (22 February 2022). "Wesley on Twitter". Twitter.
  10. ^ Brod, Maya (2023-02-15). "Two Freelance Journalists Awarded $100,000 Each for Groundbreaking Coverage, Attention to America's Underrepresented Communities" (PDF). Heising-Simons Foundation. Retrieved 2023-03-09.
  11. ^ "Judges". Heising-Simons Foundation. 2024-02-07. Retrieved 2024-02-07.
  12. ^ Peters, Jonathan (August 13, 2015). "Why the charges against Wesley Lowery and Ryan Reilly in Ferguson are absurd". Columbia Journalism Review. Archived from the original on 26 October 2016. Retrieved 26 October 2016.
  13. ^ Somaiya, Ravi; Southall, Ashley (10 August 2015). "Arrested in Ferguson Last Year, 2 Reporters Are Charged". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 6 December 2015. Retrieved 26 October 2016.
  14. ^ Suhr, Jim (May 19, 2016). "Charges dropped against 2 reporters covering Ferguson unrest". AP. Archived from the original on 26 October 2016. Retrieved 26 October 2016.
  15. ^ Shackford, Scott (18 April 2016). "Influential Washington Post Database on Police Killings Wins Pulitzer". Reason. Archived from the original on 13 September 2016. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
  16. ^ Mullin, Benjamin (25 March 2016). "How The Washington Post counted the dead, one police shooting at a time". Poynter. Archived from the original on 12 August 2016. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
  17. ^ Woodruff, Judy (April 19, 2016). "Washington Post honored for deep dive into fatal police shootings". PBS NewsHour. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  18. ^ Markowitz, Eric (8 July 2016). "Meet the Man Who Spends 10 Hours a Day Tracking Police Shootings". GQ. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  19. ^ Sutton, Kelsey (April 29, 2016). "A grassroots organization feels left behind in a Pulitzer Prize winner's shadow". Politico. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  20. ^ Associated Press (April 18, 2016). "L.A. Times wins Pulitzer for coverage of San Bernardino attack". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 20 April 2016. Retrieved 13 September 2016.
  21. ^ Hernandez, Salvador (October 13, 2016). "Department Of Justice To Start Collecting Data On Deadly Police Shootings". BuzzFeed. Archived from the original on 7 November 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  22. ^ "THEY CAN'T KILL US ALL by Wesley Lowery". Kirkus Review. September 17, 2016. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 20 September 2016.
  23. ^ Gwinn, Mary Ann (14 July 2016). "11 fall books we can't wait to read". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on 27 October 2016. Retrieved 27 October 2016.
  24. ^ Delmont, Matthew (November 11, 2016). "Gripping, fraught account of covering police shooting deaths, Movement for Black Lives". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on 13 November 2016. Retrieved 12 November 2016.
  25. ^ Garner, Dwight (10 November 2016). "Review: 'They Can't Kill Us All' Tallies the Unarmed Black Men Shot by Police". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 17 November 2016. Retrieved 12 November 2016.
  26. ^ Lin, Rong-Gong II; Nelson, Laura J. (21 April 2017). "L.A. Times Book Prizes winners announced". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 22 April 2017. Retrieved 23 April 2017.
  27. ^ "The Christopher Isherwood Prize". The Christopher Isherwood Foundation. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  28. ^ White, Peter (January 13, 2022). "'They Can't Kill Us All' Series Adaptation From Don Cheadle & Brad Weston's Makeready In The Works At AMC". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved January 13, 2022.
  29. ^ Smith, Ben (7 June 2020). "Inside the Revolts Erupting in America's Big Newsrooms". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 11 June 2020. Retrieved 11 June 2020.
  30. ^ "Award-Winning Journalist Wesley Lowery Joins American University School of Communication Faculty and Leads the Investigative Reporting Workshop". American University. 2023-06-26. Retrieved 2023-06-28.
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