NPR announced Friday it has hired two reporters to join its investigations unit as it loses a longtime investigative reporter to retirement.
Sacha Pfeiffer, who works for the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe, will join NPR as an investigations correspondent at the end of November. Pfeiffer was part of the Globe team that revealed the Catholic Church’s cover-up of clergy sexual abuse, work that won a Pulitzer Prize and was portrayed in the movie Spotlight.
Pfeiffer has also worked in public radio as host of WBUR’s Radio Boston and local All Things Considered broadcasts. She has also guest-hosted Here & Now and On Point. She will be based out of WGBH in Boston.
NPR also hired Cheryl W. Thompson, a journalism professor at George Washington University and a contributing investigative reporter at the Washington Post. She has previously worked as a local and national reporter and White House correspondent for the Post, and she is board president of Investigative Reporters and Editors. Thompson will begin her role at NPR in January.
Leaving the investigations team is Howard Berkes, a correspondent who has worked at NPR for 37 years. Berkes was one of NPR’s first national reporters and its first rural affairs correspondent. A decorated reporter, Berkes has won more than three dozen national journalism awards. He will remain at NPR until he finishes a project with PBS’ Frontline.
The changes were announced in a memo to newsroom staff Executive Editor Edith Chapin, acting SVP of News Christopher Turpin and Robert Little, head of the investigations team. The memo also said NPR is “creating a new opportunity for more journalists in the newsroom to work on investigative projects.”