About

Deborah Nelson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who joined the Merrill College faculty in 2006 after five years as the Washington investigations editor for the Los Angeles Times. Before that, she reported for The Washington Post, The Seattle Times and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Nelson co-authored a series at The Seattle Times on widespread abuses in the federal government's tribal housing program that won a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. She also served as an editor on Pulitzer Prize-winning investigations into child welfare for The Washington Post and military accidents for the Los Angeles Times.

Since joining Merrill College, she has co-authored articles for Reuters that examined global hunger, pandemics, income inequality, climate change, antibiotic resistance and military housing conditions. The University of Maryland cited that work in awarding her the 2025 Kirwan Faculty Research and Scholarship Prize. The articles also won national awards, including from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Academies of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, White House Correspondents' Association and National Press Club. 

Her critically acclaimed book, “The War Behind Me” (Basic Books 2008), documents the coverup of U.S. war crimes in Vietnam and profiles the soldiers who tried to stop the atrocities.

Students in her investigative reporting course have produced their own award-winning work for Capital News Service and the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Their series on police use of force in collaboration with the Associated Press was a 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and an investigation into congressional travel won a 2024 IRE Award.

Nelson has a J.D. from DePaul University College of Law and a B.S. in Journalism from Northern Illinois University. She also has a Graduate Certificate of Professional Studies in Multimedia Journalism from Merrill College.