Pulitzer winner Bennett leaving Bloomberg

Amanda Bennett, former executive editor for projects and investigations at Bloomberg News, is leaving the news organization.

She had been editor at large for several months after Bob Blau took over the projects and investigations team this summer. However, her bio page on the Bloomberg terminal still lists her as an executive editor.

Few journalists within the news organization knew that Bennett had resigned when contacted Wednesday. She is one of the highest ranking women in the news organization.

In a message to Talking Biz News on Wednesday afternoon, Bennett wrote:

I am totally proud of the work of the Bloomberg Projects and Investigations team over the past five years – and of the wonderful reporters and editors who made it happen. The team has been responsible for a wide range of work that ranged from a series exposing how Wall Street exported toxic debt, to Victoria’s Secret’s use of child labor, to an early look at declining standards at ratings agencies, to our eye-opening work on surveillance in repressive regimes, to the harm caused by over-use of heart stents, to our landmark suit against the Federal Reserve Board that gave us the chance to show who actually benefited from the Fed’s emergency lending. I’m also most proud of the groundbreaking June 2012 story that the team led, that for the first time exposed the wealth of the relatives of China’s top leaders. I’m proud of the courage it took from top to bottom in Bloomberg to make that happen. I’m grateful to Matt and to everyone there who gave me and the team the opportunity to be part of that journalism. It’s been a great run. And Bob Blau is a great journalist and leader.

Bennett was editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer from June 2003, to November 2006, and prior to that was editor of the Herald-Leader in Lexington, Ky. She also served for three years as managing editor/projects for The Oregonian in Portland. She joined Bloomberg in February 2007.

Bennett served as a Wall Street Journal reporter for more than 20 years. A graduate of Harvard College, she held numerous posts at the paper, including auto industry reporter in Detroit in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Pentagon and State Department reporter, Beijing correspondent, management editor/reporter, national economics correspondent and, finally, chief of the Atlanta bureau until 1998, when she moved to The Oregonian.

She was elected co-chairman of the Pulitzer Prize Board in 2010, and was a member of the board since 2002. In 1997 Bennett shared the Prize for national reporting with her Journal colleagues, and in 2001 during her tenure at The Oregonian, that paper won a Pulitzer for public service.

Projects by the Bloomberg projects and investigations team won a 2008 Loeb Award and a 2009 Overseas Press Club Award; several awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers; a 2010 and 2011 George Polk Award and a 2010 National Headliner Award.

She won a Loeb Award in 2010 for the article that formed the basis of  the book “The Cost of Hope.”

In addition to “The Cost of Hope,” she is the author of five books including “In Memoriam (1998),” co-authored with Terence B. Foley; “The Man Who Stayed Behind,” co-authored with Sidney Rittenberg (1993), and “Death of the Organization Man” (1991).