DeNeen L. Brown
2021 WMC Exceptional Journalism Award Honoree
DeNeen L. Brown has been an award-winning writer for The Washington Post for more than 35 years.
Brown is also an associate professor at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, where she teaches feature writing and the "Power of the Writing Voice."
At The Post, Brown continues to report and write, uncovering forgotten and untold stories in Black history and connecting today's news to the histories of Black heroes and sheroes including Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman, Ella Baker, Isaac Woodard, Emmett Till, Shirley Chisholm, Malcolm X, Ida B. Wells, Annie Lee Cooper, Amelia Boynton, Diane Nash, and Queen Charlotte.
Brown has written about the country's history of racial terror lynchings and massacres. After Brown's 2018 story on the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was published on the front page of The Washington Post, the mayor of Tulsa announced he would reopen the city's search for mass graves of victims of the massacre. In October 2020, the city discovered a mass grave that may be connected to the massacre. Scientists began examining the remains this summer.
During her more than three decades of work as a journalist, Brown has gained national and international attention as a ground-breaking reporter, with a strong writing voice focused on uncovering stories about the Black community. At The Post, Brown covered night police, education, courts, politics, arts, theater and culture. She has been a staff writer in the famed Style section of The Washington Post and a staff writer for The Washington Post magazine, where she wrote award-winning narratives.
From 2000 to 2004, Brown worked as a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. (She was the first Black woman to cover Canada for The Washington Post.) As Canada Bureau Chief of The Washington Post, Brown was responsible for coverage of the entire country of Canada. She wrote about Canadian elections and the Canadian prime minister's policies. She reported U.S.-Canada relations and about efforts by Quebec to separate from Canada. In Vancouver, Brown's work included a series of stories about missing women.
As a foreign correspondent, Brown traveled throughout the Arctic and the Arctic Archipelago, which consists of 94 islands, to write about climate change and indigenous populations. Many of her stories about climate change, which were first-hand reports about the fragile Arctic and thinning sea ice, are cited in scientific journals throughout the world.
In 1999, Brown won the prestigious award for Non-Deadline Writing by the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Brown's award-winning stories and essays are published in "The Best Newspaper Writing of 1999." The chapter presents five feature narratives, including a profile of a school superintendent and a narrative called “The Accused,” about two young boys wrongly accused of murder in Chicago.
"The Accused" also won the 1999 Salute to Excellence First Place feature award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
In 2020, Brown had the honor of writing about the genius and life of Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. The story was published in the March 2021 National Geographic Magazine, as the companion piece for the Nat Geo TV scripted anthology series "Genius: Aretha." https://www.nationalgeographic... work on Tulsa is featured in two documentaries:
"Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer," which was released on NatGeo TV and Hulu on June 18, 2021. https://www.hulu.com/series/ri... "Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten," which was released on PBS, May 31, 2021.
https://www.pbs.org/show/tulsa...
