Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license.
Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat.
We can research this topic together.
Blackledge was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and is a 1986 alumnus of Louisiana State University. He began his career that year with the Associated Press, and later worked for The Journal Newspapers in suburban Washington, D.C., Education Daily and The Mobile Register. He went to work for The Birmingham News in 1998.
While with the News, Blackledge contributed to Alabama AP Managing Editors Association Award-winning stories on the 2003 conviction of Bobby Frank Cherry for the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
Blackledge's multi-part investigative series on the two-year colleges delved deeply into financial records kept by the system, exposing a number of elected lawmakers on the system's payroll without clear duties. The system's chancellor was fired, federal and state investigations opened, and new safeguards for public accountability promised in the wake of the exposé. The series earned Blackledge a 2006 Alabama Associated Press Association Award. The newspaper entered the multi-part special report for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, and it was named a finalist in that category before the committee awarded it the prize for investigative reporting instead.
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, No Edition Time from 1953–1963 and the Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting from 1964–1984
