David Hilzenrath is an investigative reporter on the financial news staff of The Washington Post.

Since joining the paper as a summer intern in 1987, he has covered a variety of beats, including the rise of managed health care, the growth of the Internet and America Online, and the shaping of fiscal policy early in the Clinton Administration.  He has reported on the breakdown of federal housing programs, the finances of presidential candidates, the economics of baseball, the debts of Donald Trump, and the emergence of the tiny Pacific island Nauru as a haven for international money laundering.

As early as 1995, Hilzenrath was writing about the conflicts of interest in the auditing business that ultimately contributed to a wave of accounting scandals.  In early 2000, shortly before the bubble in Internet stocks burst, Hilzenrath reported on the use of dubious accounting to inflate corporate financial results.  His 2001series, “The Numbers Crunch,” documented the lack of accountability in the accounting industry, which Congress later sought to address through creation of an oversight board.

Hilzenrath has won awards from the Chesapeake Associated Press, the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association, The Washington Monthly, the Society of Professional Journalists (Washington, D.C., Chapter), the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (with colleagues), and the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, including the Guild’s award for National News, its Bill Pryor Memorial Grand Prize for Writing, and three Frank C. Porter Awards for Labor and Business Reporting.

He has been a Loeb finalist twice, for coverage of health care and auditing.

Hilzenrath grew up in Lexington, Mass., and graduated from Harvard College. He studied at the University of Michigan during the 1995-96 academic year on a John S. Knight Fellowship.  He lives in Bethesda, Md., with his wife Julie.