Decorated investigative journalist Mark Greenblatt named new executive editor at ASU's Howard Center

Mark Greenblatt, an award-winning investigative journalist for Scripps News, will take over as executive editor of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Greenblatt succeeds Maud Beelman, the former Associated Press investigations editor who has served as the Howard Center’s founding executive editor since 2019.

“The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at ASU has achieved a great deal under the leadership of Maud Beelman. We are now ready to write the next chapters in the history of this wonderful program,” said Battinto L. Batts Jr., dean of the Cronkite School. “Mark Greenblatt is an accomplished investigative journalist, who is committed to the craft and has a passion for developing future leaders. We are excited that Mark is joining Cronkite Nation and look forward to where he will take the Howard Center.”

Named in honor of news pioneer and media executive Roy W. Howard, the Howard Center produces investigative projects that have been published by The Associated Press, USA Today, PBS NewsHour, The Houston Chronicle, The Arizona Republic, Inside Climate News and others.

The Howard Center’s training and education provides a groundbreaking, hands-on experience, in which students learn how to produce deeply researched watchdog journalism that professional partners want to share with their audiences. The student-produced journalism has won major awards, including prizes from Investigative Reporters & Editors and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Through his investigative reporting, Greenblatt has garnered multiple awards and promoted changes in laws and institutional reforms while serving as the senior national investigative correspondent and coordinator of specialized reporting at Scripps News, based in Washington, D.C.

He has won three Peabody awards, the duPont-Columbia Award, the IRE Medal, the Livingston Award, multiple national Edward R. Murrow Awards and the national Emmy for investigative reporting and has twice been named a finalist for Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize.

“Over the last decade, Mark has led multiple award-winning projects for Scripps. His reports have led to changes in laws at many levels of government,” said Kate O’Brian, president of Scripps News. “We value the work Mark has done at Scripps and are looking forward to collaborating with him and his team in this new role at the Cronkite School of Journalism.”

Greenblatt previously served as a national correspondent for ABC News and in investigative reporter roles for KHOU in Houston, WBBH in Fort Myers and Naples, Florida, and KOAA in Pueblo and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

“I am deeply honored to join the Howard Center, which Cronkite’s world-class faculty built into an energized and leading incubator for investigative journalism’s future leaders,” Greenblatt said. “My incredible mission every day will be to create new and inspired opportunities for students seeking to reveal injustice and bring light to the world through fair, accurate and impactful accountability journalism that honors Roy Howard’s legacy.”

The Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at the Cronkite School and at the University of Maryland are made possible by the Scripps Howard Fund, which supports philanthropic causes important to The E.W. Scripps Company and the communities it serves, with a special emphasis on excellence in journalism.