The following excerpt was sent out from The Washington Post’s national editor Matea Gold, deputy national editor Philip Rucker, senior national investigations editor Peter Wallsten and democracy editor Griff Witte:
Tom Hamburger
With deep gratitude for his service to our craft and enormous pride in his accomplishments, we would like to share the bittersweet news that Tom Hamburger is retiring after an exceptional career in journalism, including a decade of producing consequential political investigations at The Post.
A Rochester, N.Y., native and Oberlin College graduate, Tom began his reporting as a Yankee in exile in Arkansas for Pine Bluff Commercial and later the Arkansas Gazette, with subsequent stops at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Washington bureaus of the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times. He is a legendary figure in those newsrooms, not just for his many journalistic achievements but for his warmth, collaborative instincts, sense of humor and unending enthusiasm for the story. Tom has been a mentor to countless young journalists, many of whom have also worked as his reporting partners.
Tom’s superpowers are his unflagging curiosity, his openness to all points of view and his ability to ward off the cynicism that infects so many Washington journalists. He never lost his love for chasing a lead or extracting a new tip.
Tom made one of his biggest marks on Washington journalism as the bureau chief for the Star Tribune, where, in 1995, he and a colleague broke a series of stories about conflicts of interest in the federal judiciary, for which they were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize public service gold medal and winners of a White House Correspondents’ Association prize for distinguished reporting. At the Journal, Tom covered the money and politics beat, diving into the influence wielded by big business and organized labor to show readers how Washington really worked.
At The Post, which he joined in 2012, Tom has been at the center of some of our most important work excavating the backgrounds and activities of the country’s most powerful players.
It’s hard to imagine the newsroom without him. Please join us in congratulating him on his remarkable career and thanking him for his friendship along the way.
