Leonard Downie Jr.

Leonard "Len" Downie Jr. is an American journalist who was executive editor of ''The Washington Post'' from 1991 to 2008. He worked in the ''Post'' newsroom for 44 years. His roles at the newspaper included executive editor, managing editor, national editor, London correspondent, assistant managing editor for metropolitan news, deputy metropolitan editor, and investigative and local reporter. Downie became executive editor upon the retirement of Ben Bradlee. During Downie's tenure as executive editor, the ''Washington Post'' won 25 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper had won during the term of a single executive editor. Downie currently serves as vice president at large at the ''Washington Post'', as Weil Family Professor of Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and as a member of several advisory boards associated with journalism and public affairs.

Downie is the author of six nonfiction books: ''All About the Story: News, Power, Politics, and the Washington Post'' (2020); ''The News Media: What Everyone Needs To Know'' (with C.W. Anderson and Michael Schudson, 2016); ''The News About the News'' (with Robert G. Kaiser, 2003); ''The New Muckrakers'' (1976); ''Mortgage on America'' (1974) and ''Justice Denied: The Case for Reform of the Courts'' (1971) ''The News About the News'' won the Goldsmith Award from the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Downie was also a major contributor to ''Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968'' and has written many newspaper and magazine articles. He authored two major special reports for the Committee to Protect Journalists, ''The Trump Administration and the Press'' (2020) and ''The Obama Administration and the Press'' (2013) and co-authored “The Reconstruction of American Journalism” (2009), a major report on the state of the news media, published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 2009, Random House published his fiction debut, ''The Rules of the Game''. Provided by Wikipedia