Joe Stephens is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Executive Editor of the Investigative Reporting Workshop (IRW).
The Workshop is an innovative, editorially independent, nonprofit newsroom that holds power to account. IRW pairs early-career journalists with veteran reporters to produce rigorous accountability stories that would otherwise go untold. Its work with partner newsrooms has exposed injustice for nearly two decades, in articles that have been recognized repeatedly by the Pulitzer board, among others.
Stephens came to AU from Princeton University, where he was the founding director of the Program in Journalism and, for 12 years, the Ferris Professor of Journalism in Residence. A veteran investigative reporter, he is a three-time winner of the George Polk Award and a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Stephens joined the Washington Post in 1999, where he was a member of the investigative projects team for more than 16 years. He has written extensively on presidential politics, political corruption, the war against terrorism, Afghan reconstruction, the federal judiciary, and drug experiments conducted on children in the developing world.
He has reported and lectured in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and across the U.S. His stories have led to Congressional hearings, national legislative reforms, criminal convictions, and millions of dollars in fines.
Stephens has won more than a dozen other national honors, including top awards from the Overseas Press Club, the Gerald Loeb Foundation, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Scripps Howard Foundation, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Stephens was a member of The Washington Post staff in 2002, when it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, for coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
He has been a finalist on multiple occasions for Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize, the Gerald Loeb award for financial reporting, and the Investigative Reporters and Editors award. Stephens has judged many major contests, and served on Pulitzer Prize juries in 2019 (Criticism) and 2020 (Investigative Reporting). He has served as a trustee and board advisor at the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the Jersey Vindicator.
From 2014 through 2025, Stephens directed and moderated Princeton University’s Newsmaker Dinner series, a public affairs discussion group. In 2016, he was named Faculty in Residence at Mathey College.
