J. Todd Foster - Editor / Bristol Herald Courier
Email: jfoster@bristolnews.com
J. Todd Foster has been the Herald Courier's managing editor since January 2007 and is a career investigative reporter who was part of a Spokane, Wash., team named a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news.
Foster joined the Bristol newspaper after four years as the top editor of The News Virginian in Waynesboro and since 2004 has won 50 awards from the Virginia and Tennessee press associations for columns, news writing, features, opinions and page design.
A regular contributor to People magazine for four years, Foster learned the identity of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's secret Watergate source "Deep Throat" - W. Mark Felt -- in 2002 but abandoned magazine and book projects with Felt's family in 2004 over issues of money and ethics. Vanity Fair broke the story of Felt in 2005.
Foster still freelances for the national magazine Campaigns & Elections and was a finalist for the national Genesis magazine award in 2000 for a six-month investigation for Reader's Digest into no-kill animal shelters across the U.S. He spent 14 years from 1985-1998 as an investigative reporter, specializing mainly in government corruption and animal abuse, for The (Portland) Oregonian, The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, the Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal and the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Free Press.
Working for People's Washington bureau, Foster reported on national politicians and covered such breaking-news stories as Osama bin Laden, the Atlanta day trader shootings, the Sago, West Virginia mine disaster, the Chandra Levy murder case in Washington, D.C., and the D.C. sniper spree.
Foster won the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association 2008 award for best local story with a 13-month effort aimed at identifying the salaries of every public official in the region; the online salary database at TriCities.com now includes about 25,000 names and salaries from the two-state region. Foster won two Blethen awards for outstanding journalism in the Pacific Northwest and two Best of the West awards in competition with journalists from across 13 Western states. He is a 2005 winner of the Virginia State Bar's journalism award. His 1991 investigation into the Escambia County, Florida animal shelter spurred the firing of three top shelter officials and won first place in the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors contest. His 1995 investigation into greyhound racing cruelty led to a track's permanent closure in North Idaho. His 1997 corruption investigation into the Baker City, Oregon police department resulted in the resignation of the then-longest-tenured police chief in the state.
In August 1992, Foster spent 11 days covering the federal government's siege of white separatist Randy Weaver at his Idaho cabin on Ruby Ridge. The Spokesman-Review's coverage was a Pulitzer finalist, along with winner The Los Angeles Times and The Miami Herald.
Foster's awards include the Tennessee Hospital Association's 1986 "Medical Writer of the Year;" numerous awards from Gannett, and Media General's top news-writing award for community newspapers in 2006. He is a longtime member of the Society of Professional Journalists and Investigative Reporters & Editors.
A native of Tullahoma, Tennessee, Foster began his journalism career in 1978 as a 17-year-old sports editor for a weekly in Winchester, Tennessee. He graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1982.
