Lou Kilzer

Journalism

He began work as a journalist in 1973 after graduating cum laude in philosophy from Yale University,^[1] joining the Rocky Mountain News in December 1977. He covered police, courts and investigations. In 1983, he began a five-year stint on the investigations unit and city desk of the Denver Post, and then seven years on the investigative unit of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

In 1986, Kilzer and two other Denver Post reporters won for that newspaper a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series that debunked the notion that millions of small American children were being kidnapped each year by strangers.^[2]

He and another Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter won a Pulitzer for investigative reporting in 1990 for articles exposing how top officials at the Saint Paul Fire Department were profiting from the arson industry.^[3] He has also won over a dozen national journalism awards, including the George Polk Award for National Reporting,^[4] and the IRE award for investigative journalism.^[5]

In 1994, Kilzer returned to the Denver Post as investigations editor,^[6] followed by five years as investigative reporter where he had begun his career: The Rocky Mountain News. Kilzer covered the insider stock trading by Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio and appeared before his stock fraud indictment and conviction. In 2008, Kilzer accepted the job of editor-in-chief of the JoongAng Daily in Seoul, South Korea. The JoongAng Daily (now known as the Korea JoongAng Daily) is published in partnership with the International New York Times.^[7] Kilzer returned to the United States in 2010, taking a job on the investigative unit of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.^[8] He retired and moved with his wife, Liz, to Costa Rica where he is pursuing a book writing career.^[9]

In 2012 he won the William Brewster Styles Award given by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for reporting on international money laundering. Kilzer won the award, together with fellow reporter Andrew Conte and Investigations Editor Jim Wilhelm for work published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.^[10][11]

Books

Kilzer's 1994 book, Churchill's Deception, sought to prove that Great Britain tricked Germany into attacking the Soviet Union in 1941. It was published by Simon & Schuster. Kirkus Reviews called the book "an audacious rereading of the diplomatic history" of World War II," in which Kilzer argues "that Winston Churchill deliberately nurtured Hitler's illusion that powerful British factions sought an end to the war on terms favorable to Nazi Germany, and thus outwitted Hitler into starting a war against the Soviets that Germany could not win." The book maintains that Rudolf Hess's 1941 flight to Britain was a British intelligence operation, and that the man who died in Spandau Prison in 1987 was not Hess. Kirkus called the book "an absorbing and cogently argued original contribution to WW II literature."^[12] Booklist said historians would give the book "short shrift" because it was primarily derived from existing published works, and Library Journal described the Hess theory as "generally discredited."^[13]

His 2000 book Hitler's Traitor: Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich contends that Germany's defeat was largely the result of the Red Orchestra spy ring that had penetrated the German High Command.^[14] The book contends that Martin Bormann, a top aide to Adolf Hitler, and Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, were both Soviet agents. Publishers Weekly said that Kilzer "revisits this arena with an entertaining synthesis of evidence about the activities of these spies, extensive accounts of relevant military history, and informed speculations about causes and effects, motives and behaviors."^[15]

Kilzer's first book of fiction, co-authored with Mark Boyden, a British business consulting executive, is called "Fatal Redemption," published by Enigmas Publishing. "Fatal Redemption" won several national awards including the IRDA in 2015, the crime fiction award category for the Beverly Hills International Book Awards and the general fiction category of the 2015 Great Northwest Book Festival. Kilzer and Boyden are writing a series centering around a journalist named Sally Will.^[16] This includes the title, "Fatal Seductions."

Discover more about Career related topics

Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution.

Rocky Mountain News

Rocky Mountain News

The Rocky Mountain News was a daily newspaper published in Denver, Colorado, from April 23, 1859, until February 27, 2009. It was owned by the E. W. Scripps Company from 1926 until its closing. As of March 2006, the Monday–Friday circulation was 255,427. From the 1940s until 2009, the newspaper was printed in a tabloid format.

The Denver Post

The Denver Post

The Denver Post is a daily newspaper and website published in Denver, Colorado. As of June 2022, it has an average print circulation of 57,265. In 2016, its website received roughly six million monthly unique visitors generating more than 13 million page views, according to comScore.

Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize

The Pulitzer Prize is an award administered by Columbia University for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher. Prizes are awarded annually in twenty-one categories. In twenty of the categories, each winner receives a certificate and a US$15,000 cash award. The winner in the public service category is awarded a gold medal.

Star Tribune

Star Tribune

The Star Tribune is the largest newspaper in Minnesota. It originated as the Minneapolis Tribune in 1867 and the competing Minneapolis Daily Star in 1920. During the 1930s and 1940s, Minneapolis's competing newspapers were consolidated, with the Tribune published in the morning and the Star in the evening. They merged in 1982, creating the Star and Tribune, and it was renamed to Star Tribune in 1987. After a tumultuous period in which the newspaper was sold and re-sold and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2009, it was purchased by local businessman Glen Taylor in 2014.

Saint Paul Fire Department

Saint Paul Fire Department

The Saint Paul Fire Department provides fire protection and emergency medical services to the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Investigative journalism

Investigative journalism

Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, political corruption, or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing a report. Practitioners sometimes use the terms "watchdog reporting" or "accountability reporting."

Editor-in-chief

Editor-in-chief

An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies.

Seoul

Seoul

Seoul, officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. According to the 2020 census, Seoul has a population of 9.9 million people, and forms the heart of the Seoul Capital Area with the surrounding Incheon metropolis and Gyeonggi province. Considered to be a global city and rated as an Alpha – City by Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC), Seoul was the world's fourth largest metropolitan economy in 2014, following Tokyo, New York City and Los Angeles.

South Korea

South Korea

South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern part of the Korean Peninsula and shares a land border with North Korea. The country's western border is formed by the Yellow Sea, while its eastern border is defined by the Sea of Japan. South Korea claims to be the sole legitimate government of the entire peninsula and adjacent islands. It has a population of 51.75 million, of which roughly half live in the Seoul Capital Area, the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the world. Other major cities include Incheon, Busan, and Daegu.

Korea JoongAng Daily

Korea JoongAng Daily

Korea JoongAng Daily is the English edition of the South Korean national daily newspaper JoongAng Ilbo. The newspaper was first published on October 17, 2000, originally named as JoongAng Ilbo English Edition. It mainly carries news and feature stories by staff reporters, and some stories translated from the Korean language newspaper.

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, also known as "the Trib," is the second largest daily newspaper serving metropolitan Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. Although it transitioned to an all-digital format on December 1, 2016, it remains the second largest daily in the state, with nearly one million unique page views a month. Founded on August 22, 1811, as the Greensburg Gazette and in 1889 consolidated with several papers into the Greensburg Tribune-Review, the paper circulated only in the eastern suburban counties of Westmoreland and parts of Indiana and Fayette until May 1992, when it began serving all of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area after a strike at the two Pittsburgh dailies, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Pittsburgh Press, deprived the city of a newspaper for several months.

Kilzer was born in Cody, Wyoming, the son of Robert and Marjorie Kilzer. He and his wife, Liz Kovacs, have two grown children.

• Kilzer, Lou, and Mark Boyden. Fatal Redemption: A Mystery Thriller. Enigmas Publishing, 2014. ISBN 9780992806804
• Kilzer, Lou, and Mark Boyden. Fatal Seductions: Second in the Sally Will series. Enigmas Publishing, 2015. ISBN 9780992806859
• Kilzer, Lou, and Sarah Huntley. Battered Justice. Denver, CO: Rocky Mountain News, 2005. OCLC 84154064
• Kilzer, Louis C. Hitler's Traitor: Martin Bormann and the Defeat of the Reich. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 2000. ISBN 0891417109
• Kilzer, Louis C. Churchill's Deception: The Dark Secret That Destroyed Nazi Germany. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. ISBN 0671767224