Before joining UF in 2018, Bridis was editor of the Associated Press’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington investigative team and was AP’s leading newsroom expert on security practices for source-protection and on the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and related laws.
His investigative team won the 2012 Pulitzer and Goldsmith prizes for investigative reporting on NYPD intelligence programs, and he led AP’s efforts that won the $10,000 Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Awards in 2011 and 2014. He won the 2014 Shadid Award for Journalism Ethics and the 2014 Society of Professional Journalism Ethics in Journalism Award. His team’s coverage of hurricane flooding at toxic waste sites was a finalist for the 2017 Investigative Reporters and Editors Award in the category of investigations triggered by breaking news.
Among his other journalistic achievements:
He was the first journalist to discover and trace Hillary Clinton’s private email server to her home’s basement in Chappaqua, New York.
His investigative team was first to reveal in August 2016 Paul Manafort’s and Rick Gates’ covert foreign lobbying activities.
He had been one of AP’s seven analysts since 2004 responsible for projecting winners in national elections (his call in 2016 allowed AP to be the first new organization to project Donald Trump winning the presidency).
Bridis previously covered technology, hackers, national security and the Justice Department for the AP in Washington, where he worked for 20 years .
The $25,000 Collier Prize for State Government Accountability at the University of Florida is one of the largest journalism prizes in the nation. It is designed to encourage coverage of state-level government in every state, focusing on investigative and political reporting. The prize, announced annually at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, recognizes the best U. S. professional reporting on state government accountability in any medium or on any platform and is available to any news organization.