Michael Rezendes

Michael Rezendes is an American journalist. He is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative work for The Boston Globe. Since joining the Globe he has covered presidential, state and local politics, and was a weekly essayist, roving national correspondent, city hall bureau chief, and the deputy editor for national news.

Personal life and education

Rezendes is of Portuguese descent, born in Maine.[1] He graduated from Boston University with a BA in English and with an MFA from American Film Institute.[2][3] In 2008 and 2009, he was the recipient of a John S. Knight journalism fellowship at Stanford University.

Career

Before arriving at The Boston Globe, Rezendes was a staff writer at The Washington Post, and a government and politics reporter for the San Jose Mercury News and the Boston Phoenix. He was also a contributing writer at Boston magazine and the editor of the East Boston Community News.

He joined The Boston Globe in 1989.[3]

Catholic church scandal

For more than a decade Rezendes has been a member of the Globe's Spotlight Team. He was a member of the group of reporters whose work in exposing the Roman Catholic church's cover-up of clergy sex abuse earned The Boston Globe the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.[4] For his reporting and writing on the Church, he also shared the George Polk Award for National Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, and numerous other honors.

Rezendes's reporting revealed that top Catholic officials had veiled the abuses committed by the Rev. John Geoghan, a Boston priest who molested more than 100 children in six parishes over three decades.[4] In addition, Rezendes broke the stories about similar cover-ups by Church officials in New York City and Tucson, Arizona.[5][6][7]

Further investigations as Spotlight member

Rezendes and the Spotlight Team were also Pulitzer Prize finalists for a series of stories that uncovered abuses in the debt collection industry. "Debtors Hell" won the Public Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize.

As a Spotlight Team member, Rezendes played a key role in many of the Globe's most significant investigations, including those probing the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, financial corruption in the nation's charitable foundations, and the plight of mentally ill state prisoners. He was also on a team of reporters that won a first-place award from the Education Writers Association for a special section on school desegregation.

Books

He is a co-author of Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, and a contributing author to Sin Against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church.

In the 2015 film Spotlight, he was portrayed by Mark Ruffalo, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.

References
  1. Rothman, Michael; Miller, David (29 February, 2016). The Real 'Spotlight': Meet Team That Inspired the Oscar-Winning Film. ABC News.
  2. February 19, 2016. AFI Grad Michael Rezendes on the True Story of SPOTLIGHT. American Film Institute.
  3. The Globe Investigative Team, Michael Rezendes. The Boston Globe.
  4. "The 2003 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Public Service". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2013-10-28. With reprints of twenty-two 2002 articles. Rezendes wrote the first one, "Church allowed abuse by priest for years" (January 6).
  5. Henley, Joe. "How the Boston Globe exposed the abuse scandal that rocked the Catholic Church". "The Guardian". April 21, 2010.
  6. Harris, Roy J. Jr. Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism. University of Missouri Press. 2007.
  7. Plante, Thomas G. Sin Against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church. Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. 2004.
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