Michael Rezendes has been an investigative reporter with The Boston Globe Spotlight Team for eight years. He shared a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for investigating the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, as well as the George Polk award for National Reporting, the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, and numerous other honors.
Rezendes was the lead reporter on the opening story of The Globe’s series on the Church, revealing that top Catholic officials had veiled the abuses committed by the Rev. John Geoghan, a Boston priest who molested more than 100 children in six parishes over three decades. In addition, Rezendes broke the stories about similar cover-ups by Church officials in New York City and Tucson, Arizona.
More recently, Rezendes and the Spotlight Team were 2007 Pulitzer Prize finalists for a series of stories that uncovered corruption in the debt collection industry. “Debtors’ Hell” won the Public Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize.
Over the last decade, Rezendes has played a key role in many of The Globe’s most significant investigations, including those probing the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, financial corruption in the nation’s charitable foundations, and the plight of mentally ill state prisoners.
A staff writer and editor at The Globe since 1989, Rezendes has covered presidential, state, and local politics. He was also a weekly essayist, roving national correspondent, city hall bureau chief, and the deputy editor for national news.
As city hall bureau chief, Rezendes covered race relations and the public schools, and was later part of a team or reporters that won a first place award from the Education Writers Association for a special section on the legacy of school busing.
Before arriving at The Globe, Rezendes was a staff writer at The Washington Post and a government and politics reporter for the San Jose Mercury News and the Boston Phoenix. He was also a contributing writer at Boston Magazine and the editor of the East Boston Community News.
Rezendes is a co-author of Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church, and a contributing author of Sin Against the Innocents: Sexual Abuse by Priests and the Role of the Catholic Church. He is currently a recipient of a John S. Knight fellowship at Stanford University, where he is researching the effects of secrecy in public life.
Rezendes graduated from Boston University and received an MFA from the American Film Institute. He can be reached at rezendes@globe.com.
