William Freivogel | SIU

School of Journalism and Advertising

Professor Bill Freivogel served as Director of the School of Journalism from 2006-14. He came to SIU after 34 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He was a member of the newspaper's Washington bureau for 12 years, where he served as assistant bureau chief, focused on the Supreme Court and reported on such historic events as the assassination attempt on President Reagan and the confirmation fight over Clarence Thomas. He returned to St. Louis and became the deputy editorial page editor in 1997.

Freivogel's editorials on former Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Constitution made him a finalist in the 2002 Pulitzer Prize competition. He also won Sigma Delta Chi's top award in 1991 for a series on the Bill of Rights, and he shared the Sidney Hillman award for a series on civil rights policy changes during the Reagan administration. Freivogel was the main contributor to a 1987 project that won the Benjamin Franklin award as the best newspaper series on the bicentennial of the Constitution. In his early years in Washington, he won the Emery A. Brownell Award for stories influential in blocking the Reagan administration's attempt to kill the Legal Services Corp. He shared the Investigative Reporters and Editors award and National Press Club's Washington correspondence award for stories on defense fraud at General Dynamics Corp. He also won a Washington correspondence award for reporting on dioxin contamination in Missouri and political machinations within the Environmental Protection Agency. Freivogel won three Connie Rosenbaum awards in the 1970s for stories that reformed the St. Louis bail bond system and cleaned up a corrupt suburban police department after a suspect was killed in police custody.