Brian Howey is an award-winning reporter who has covered topics ranging from policing to wedgefish. He has published work in the The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, the Los Angeles Times and various other national, regional and local publications. Howey currently works as a New York Times Local Investigations Fellow with Mississippi Today, where he focuses on Mississippi sheriffs departments. He earned a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he studied investigative reporting and narrative writing.
Awards
Howey won a 2023 George Polk Award in the Justice Reporting category for his two-part exposé of a controversial police interview tactic popularized by one of the nation’s largest developers of law enforcement policy manuals. He published the stories in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Program, the Los Angeles Times and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. His Los Angeles Times story also won a Sacramento Press Club Journalism Award.
Howey reported on the team that was named a 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist and a 2024 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting finalist for Unfettered Power: Mississippi Sheriffs, an investigative series for Mississippi Today and The New York Times.
He also won a 2020 SPJ Excellence in Journalism Award, and was a producer for the team that won third place at the 2020 Best of the West journalism awards for audio storytelling.