Corey Johnson
Keynote Speaker FSNE Awards Lunch
Thursday, July 20
Corey Johnson is an investigative reporter for ProPublica.
Previously, he was at Tampa Bay Times, and led the project “Poisoned” which revealed how Florida’s only lead smelter endangered hundreds of workers and polluted the surrounding community. The three-part series forced immediate safety improvements, a lawsuit, new oversight rules and government penalties. The investigation won several prestigious honors including the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, the George Polk Award, the Gerald Loeb Award, the IRE Gold Medal, the Worth Bingham Prize, a News Leader Association Award, a National Headliners Award, and a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
Johnson’s other work exposed dangerous amounts of lead in the drinking water of Florida schools; outed troubled doctors in the state’s medical marijuana program; and unraveled a church leader’s secret embezzlement of government and philanthropic grants.
Before the Times, Johnson was a reporter at The Marshall Project, where an investigation he co-reported on the harsh sentencing of juveniles led to the release of a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, man who had been imprisoned for life as a teenager.
At the Center for Investigative Reporting, Johnson uncovered hundreds of illegal and coercive sterilization surgeries inside California’s women’s prison. The revelations sparked legislative hearings, a state audit, a ban on future procedures and recently, a reparations program for victims. He also unearthed decades of state failures resulting in weak earthquake protections at thousands of public schools.
Johnson is a co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society, which teaches investigative craft to aspiring and mid-career journalists of color. Johnson was born and raised in Atlanta, GA. He is a proud graduate of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, FL.