Two editors of The Washington Examiner are being promoted as the daily newspaper launches a special reporting team focused on corruption in government.
Mark Tapscott has been promoted from editorial page editor to executive editor and will direct the new team. Succeeding Tapscott as editorial page editor is David Freddoso, who moves up from online opinion editor.
“The paper has been eager to do hard-hitting, enterprise reporting, and Mark’s long experience in journalism makes him perfect for the job,” said Washington Examiner Editor Stephen G. Smith. “It is especially important today because so many news organizations have cut back their investigative efforts.”
Tapscott joined The Examiner as editorial page editor in April 2006. Previously he was an assistant managing editor at the Washington Times and also held a variety of other editing and reporting positions at that paper and at the Journal Newspapers.
At the Heritage Foundation, he founded and led the think tank’s Computer-Assisted Investigative Reporting Boot Camps at the National Press Club. He will continue writing columns and blog posts for The Examiner’s print and online editions.
Freddoso joined the newspaper’s commentary staff as a senior writer in June 2009 from National Review Online, where he covered Congress and the 2008 presidential campaign. He was promoted to online commentary editor in 2010 and last year was chief editorial designer of The Examiner’s Campaign 2012 website.
Freddoso has written two books, “The Case Against Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate” in August 2008, and “Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy” in April 2011.
Three veteran journalists are joining The Examiner’s special reporting team:
» Mark Flatten comes to The Examiner from the Goldwater Institute in Arizona. Flatten has been an award-winning investigative and political reporter for three Arizona newspapers. Among his many citations are the Arizona Newspapers Association Freedom of Information Award in 2011, the Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award in 2010, and the Arizona Press Club’s Don Bolles Award for Investigative Reporting in 2005.
» Jennifer Peebles joins The Examiner as data editor. She comes to the newspaper from Texas Watchdog, where she was deputy editor. Previously Peebles was government reporting team leader for the Nashville Tennessean. She is a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors.
» Richard Pollock was most recently Washington bureau chief for Pajamas Media TV. He is a former Washington producer for “Good Morning America,” where he also produced news reports from the Pentagon and the White House. A former vice president for external communications at the Cato Institute, he also served as senior producer of “Fox News Sunday” with Tony Snow.
