David Zeman

David Zeman is the Assistant Managing Editor for Investigations at the Detroit Free Press and has been an editor and reporter at the Free Press since 1991.

He edited and managed reports exposing corruption by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, and six other national prizes including an IRE award, a George Polk Award, the Associated Press Managing Editors Public Service Award and the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting. Zeman also edited stories that have won the Nancy Dickerson Whitehead Award for Excellence in Reporting on Drug and Alcohol Problems, a National Headliner Award and numerous state awards.   As a reporter, Zeman was named 2005 Journalist of the Year by the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists; twice won the University of Michigan’s Morgan O’Leary Award for government investigative reporting and the Michigan Bar’s Wade H. McCree, Jr. Award for the Advancement of Justice. He was a finalist for the national Vivian Castleberry Award from the Association for Women Journalists and the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism.  Zeman previously was a reporter at The Miami Herald and The News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C. He was a practicing attorney in Miami from 1984-86. He has a law degree from the University of Miami, a Master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.