Laurie Roberts

Laurie Roberts is a news columnist for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. The Republic is the largest newspaper in Arizona, and azcentral.com is the state's largest news Web site.

Roberts has written about a variety of subjects, notably the deaths of children to child abuse, and right-wing Republican "kooks" in the Arizona Legislature.

She won a national Sunshine Award from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2008 for "her extraordinary diligence in investigating cases of child abuse, for shining the light on CPS (the state Child Protective Services agency) for its failure to protect children and for paving the way for a successful public records lawsuit that has led to legislative hearings on CPS and key legislation."

Roberts was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2001, with the Pulitzer committee citing "her persuasive editorial series urging reform of the process by which the state draws its legislative and congressional districts."

As The Republic's politics editor, she was responsible for the paper's coverage of then-Gov. Evan Mecham in 1988, which earned reporter Sam Stanton recognition as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General News Reporting.