Debbie Cenziper

She grew up in Philadelphia and graduated from the University of Florida, in 1992.[1] She was named an outstanding young alumni by the University of Florida in 2008.[2]

She worked as a reporter for The Miami Herald,[3] The Charlotte Observer, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.[4] She won a 2007 Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles exposing corruption and waste in the Miami-Dade Housing Agency, which The Miami Herald published in 2006. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist[5] in 2006 for a series of stories on breakdowns in the nation's hurricane-forecasting system. She has also been awarded the Polk Award, the Robert Kennedy Award for Human Rights and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University. She was recently named the director of investigative reporting at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Cenziper writes for The Washington Post.[6] She is the co-author of the nonfiction book, "Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality".[7] The book, published in 2016 by William Morrow, received a starred review by Booklist and was named a notable book of 2016[8] by The Washington Post.

Her second nonfiction book, "Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America," was published on November 12, 2019 by Hachette Books. According to a book review in The Washington Post: "Cenziper brought her investigative skills to bear on the challenge of retrieving the hard facts, but she also possesses the gift of a storyteller....[Citizen 865 is] a highly significant work of investigation that is eye-opening and heartbreaking. She compels us to confront the crimes of the Trawniki men in a way that burns itself into both memory and history."

She is a frequent speaker at universities, national writing conferences, book clubs and festivals. She has been a guest on dozens of television and radio shows, including CNN, MSNBC and NPR’s Talk of the Nation. She and her stories at The Miami Herald were featured in a national PBS documentary on investigative reporting; her work at The Washington Post was featured in an award-winning, full-length documentary film, released nationwide in 2013.

In June 2017, she was named in a question on the game show Jeopardy! Host Alex Trebec asked contestants, “Like Bob Woodward at The Washington Post, Debbie Cenziper is this type of reporter, from the Latin for ‘to track.’”

• Book award finalist, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), 2019
• Pulitzer Prize, local reporting, 2007
• Pulitzer Prize finalist, explanatory reporting, 2006
• American Society of Newspaper Editors, local accountability award, 2014
• Robert F. Kennedy Award for Human Rights, 2014
• Harvard University's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, grand prize, 2009, finalist, 2007
• Heywood Broun award for substantial distinction, 2009, finalist 2014
• George Polk Award for Metropolitan Reporting, 2008
• Sigma Delta Chi award for investigative reporting, 2007
• Harry Chapin award for reporting on hunger and poverty, 2007
• Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, winner, 2004, finalist, 2005, 2006, 2012, 2013
• Maryland Press and Virginia Press awards, 2008, 2009, 2011
• University of Florida, Outstanding Young Alumnus, 2008
• Society of Professional Journalists, Gene Miller Award for Investigative Reporting, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
• Florida Society of Newspaper Editors, gold medal for public service, 2005, 2006, 2007

• Cenziper, Debbie; Obergefell, Jim (2016). Love Wins:The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 978-0062456083.
• Cenziper, Debbie (2019). Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler's Hidden Soldiers in America. Hachette Books. ISBN 9780316449656.

• "House of Lies", The Miami Herald