Floodlight welcomes veteran investigative journalist Ames Alexander to its staff

Floodlight is thrilled to announce we have hired Ames Alexander, a veteran investigative reporter with a stellar history of producing impactful, award-winning work.

For the past 31 years, Alexander has uncovered some of the biggest problems facing North Carolina for the Charlotte Observer, a news outlet nationally known for its hard-hitting investigative reporting.

Alexander’s stories have revealed the abuse by correctional officers of incarcerated people in the North Carolina prison system, inhumane working conditions at poultry plants and shoddy death investigations. He also reported on soaring profits and bloated executive salaries at nonprofit hospitals in North Carolina that sue poor and uninsured patients delinquent on their bills.

He was a lead reporter on two investigations named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Alexander’s work has garnered more than 35 other national honors, including The Robert F. Kennedy journalism award, Gerald Loeb business reporting award, Investigative Reporters and Editors award, Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and Sigma Delta Chi investigative reporting award, along with many others.

His reporting has led to real change, including new laws and federal indictments. After Alexander revealed that residents in Charlotte were endangered by its woefully understaffed ambulance service, local officials hired more paramedics, bought more ambulances and put the emergency medical services under new management.

Alexander’s former colleagues describe him as smart, hard-working and congenial. Retired Observer editor Jim Walser described him as “absolutely gold.”

Before arriving at the Charlotte Observer in 1993, Alexander worked for five years as a projects reporter for the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey. He is a cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he recalls “spending much of my waking life at the college newspaper.”

“Alexander’s decades of experience holding the powerful to account as a local journalist will be a tremendous asset to Floodlight as we work to reveal the forces stalling climate action and report stories that resonate with people across the country and around the world,” said Emily Holden, Floodlight’s founder and executive director.

Alexander joins the staff March 11.

“I am beyond thrilled to join the Floodlight team, and to have this chance to help cover the planet’s biggest story,” Alexander said. “Everything about Floodlight — its top-flight journalism, its people, its crucial mission — has impressed me immensely.”