Jim Schaefer

Jim Schaefer, investigative journalist for the Detroit Free Press, is the winner of many awards including the Pulitzer Prize, the United States’ highest honor in journalism. He was a 2014 ICFJ Professional Fellow from the U.S., on the program "Unlocking the Economic Potential of Digital Media." Leading a yearlong investigation into the synthetic drug fentanyl that had caused hundreds of deaths, Schaefer traced the drug to a lab in Mexico and the chemist that made it. The resulting 12-page project won the Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for Excellence in Reporting on Drug and Alcohol Problems. Schaefer and a colleague exposed corruption in the administration of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, proving the mayor had lied in court and improperly paid people with public funds to obscure his misdeeds; they won eight journalism awards including the Pulitzer for Local Reporting in 2009. His blogging about the former mayor’s trial helped the newspaper win the Edward R. Murrow Award for best website.

Schaefer has also worked for the Free Press as a night police reporter, page designer, copy editor and video game reviewer. As a television journalist, Schaefer worked for the TV station WXYZ as an investigative producer with the station’s special projects unit, reporting, writing and directing in-depth video stories. Schaefer teaches investigative reporting and copy editing as an adjunct professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and the University of Detroit Mercy.

During his visit to the UAE, Schaefer plans to study how digital media companies promote their content. “I want to learn more about balancing a web site's need for traffic with the real responsibility to produce quality journalism,” Schaefer said. “I would like to explore and learn strategies for newspapers and other content producers to wring more value out of our original content.”