Scripps Washington Bureau adds top talent to investigative team, digital

Twitter post: The Scripps Washington bureau has hired two veterans to lead its investigative journalism and digital media teams @EWScrippsCo

News provided by

The E.W. Scripps Company

Jan 10, 2014, 08:00 ET

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The E.W. Scripps Company (NYSE: SSP) has made two significant hires at its Washington bureau. Phil Pruitt is the new director of digital content and Marcia Myers joins the team as the senior investigations editor.

Pruitt will lead digital news and information operations for the bureau, including launching DecodeDC, a new multi-platform political news outlet acquired by Scripps last fall.

Myers will develop, lead and edit national, high-impact investigative projects. Both start Monday, Jan. 13.

Pruitt joins the bureau from Yahoo News, where he was instrumental in helping Yahoo expand its focus to include original content. As senior politics editor in Washington, D.C., he oversaw the packaging and presentation of daily political reporting, including coverage of the 2010 and 2012 elections.

"It is an honor to join the Washington team that will build on this company's long history of quality, substantive journalism," said Pruitt. "We're mapping out a mission for digital journalism that will make a difference for readers and viewers across the country."

Prior to joining Yahoo, Pruitt was an editorial leader and digital innovator at USA Today and Gannett News Service. From 2008 until 2010, he was the deputy managing editor for news at USA Today, leading coordination of online and print editions of the newspaper. Pruitt supervised a digital news staff and directed a network of national correspondents that produced major breaking stories and enterprise pieces for online and print.

Pruitt served as senior Washington editor of Gannett News Service and enterprise editor, overseeing major investigative projects and coordinating with Gannett newspapers and television stations across the country.

In 1991, Pruitt was the editor on a team that won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a series titled "Getting Away with Murder" that disclosed hundreds of child abuse-related deaths go undetected each year as a result of errors by coroners.

Pruitt graduated from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor's degree in history and from the University of Iowa with a master's degree in mass communications.

Myers joins the bureau from London, where she led major investigative reporting across Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Bloomberg News. Her projects included "Wired for Repression," an investigation into the sale of surveillance equipment by Western companies to repressive governments, which won the 2011 George Polk Award for International Reporting and the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Investigative Reporting.

"As a native Ohioan, I grew up with Scripps," said Myers, "I am thrilled to be a part of this remarkable team and its commitment to public-service journalism."

Between 2006 and 2010 Myers was deputy managing editor and assistant managing editor for national and foreign news at the Baltimore Sun. She was responsible for news coverage across all departments for both the newspaper and the website and led investigative and enterprise reporting. Myers also oversaw reporting from the White House, Congress and numerous federal agencies. As national editor, she led a three-part investigation of an experimental blood coagulant linked to deadly clots and that were used prolifically on wounded soldiers in Iraq – a project that won the 2006 George Polk Award for medical coverage.

Myers studied at The Ohio State University and Ohio University.

"We are thrilled to welcome two such talented professionals to our team," said Ellen Weiss, vice president and Washington bureau chief for Scripps. "Phil is a world-class editor and digital news leader, and Marcia has an incredible reputation as a great editor who inspires her reporters and consistently delivers original, hard-hitting stories. Both will be instrumental in helping us to define our digital voice, to build our audience and to make our daily and investigative reporting accessible to many more people."

About Scripps
The E.W. Scripps Company (www.scripps.com) serves audiences and businesses through a growing portfolio of television, print and digital media brands. It owns 19 local television stations and daily newspapers in 13 markets across the United States and an expanding collection of local and national digital journalism and information businesses. Scripps also produces television programming, runs an award-winning investigative reporting newsroom in Washington, D.C., and serves as the long-time steward of one of the nation's most successful educational programs, Scripps Spelling Bee. Founded in 1879, Scripps is focused on the stories of tomorrow.

SOURCE The E.W. Scripps Company