Chris Adams joined Knight Ridder's Washington-based investigative unit in 2003. He previously worked for the Pittsburgh and Washington bureaus of The Wall Street Journal, and before that The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune. He has covered a range of beats: the steel industry, health care, the FDA, the environment, education, and immigration.

His recent series on off-label drug use (with Alison Young) won a National Headliner Award and an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. Previous investigations won the George Polk Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, the Worth Bingham Prize, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, the Clark Mollenhoff Award for Investigative Reporting, the National Headliner Award, the Livingston Award, and awards from the Education Writers Association.

He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1996 and 1999, and in 2000 was part of a six-person Journal team that won the Pulitzer for stories on Pentagon spending.

He has been a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award twice before: 1996, for a Times-Picayune investigation of the Louisiana Medicaid program, and in 1999 (with Michael Moss and Ellen Graham) for a Wall Street Journal investigation of the nursing home industry.