Mark Greenblatt

MARK GREENBLATT is a three-time Peabody award-winner who teaches how to collaborate on high-impact multimedia investigations. Prior to joining the Cronkite School he worked as senior national investigative correspondent in Washington D.C. for Scripps News, where for more than a decade he led investigations and mentored early-career journalists.  Greenblatt’s reports have led to changes in laws at all levels of government, along with wholesale reforms of institutions. He was the lead reporter for the investigative podcast Verified- The Next Threat, a six-episode podcast series that uncovered an international network of global extremists recruiting for a new transnational holy war and white power. After Greenblatt's reporting exposed the military sex offender registration loophole, the Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence cited his work on the floor of the U.S. Senate just before Senators voted 98-0 to close the loophole.  The Senate bill was signed into law by President Obama. Greenblatt's careful work with sources inside the Veterans Administration led to the felony indictment of a Veterans Administration hospital chief of staff and Congressional hearings. In his Case Cleared series of reports, Greenblatt led a collaborative investigation with reporters at Scripps, ProPublica and Reveal that showed how dozens of police departments nationally masked the truth about how many rape investigations they had really solved, marking rape cases as ‘cleared’ with a little-known tool called “exceptional clearance.” The tool allows police to tell the public the case is solved, when in fact they leave the suspect on the streets with no arrest and no prosecution.

Greenblatt’s reports have earned the duPont-Columbia Award, the I.R.E. Medal, the Livingston Award, multiple national Edward R. Murrow Awards, two Sigma Delta Chi Awards, the national Emmy for investigative reporting and he has twice been named a finalist for Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize (and has served on its five-member jury).  Greenblatt currently serves as the elected Treasurer and member of the Board of Directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), the world’s leading investigative journalism training organization. He has led panels and master classes for video, print and data investigative journalists at national IRE and NICAR conferences for more than two decades. Greenblatt is the past president of the Fund for Investigative Journalism and knows what it takes to produce high-impact investigations as a student. As a college senior he won an IRE student award for a data-driven investigation of failing bridges.  That story led to millions of dollars being appropriated to fix bad bridges. Greenblatt also won first place in the Hearst National Television News Championships as a student. 

He formerly worked at ABC News in New York and in full-time investigative roles for KHOU (CBS) in Houston and WBBH (NBC) in Fort Myers. Greenblatt is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.