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We’re delighted to announce that Pulitzer Prize-winning editor Patti Epler has joined the Civil Beat team as deputy editor.

The position marks a return to Hawaii for the veteran journalist, who lived on a sailboat in Honolulu in the 1980s and worked as an assistant editor at Honolulu Magazine.

Patti led the reporting team at the East Valley Tribune in Arizona that won the for its five-part seies, “Reasonable Doubt,” which examined controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his focus on illegal immigration. Patti was also a member of the Anchorage Daily News team that won the coveted Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service for its coverage of violence and alcoholism among Alaska Natives.

With her wealth of experience leading investigative reporting efforts, Patti will strengthen our editorial team and allow me to branch out as general manager of the site.

Patti was metro editor, projects/enterprise editor and writing coach at the Tribune from 2004 to 2009. Before joining the paper, she was managing editor at the alternative weekly New Times in Phoenix.

As an editor, Patti has been responsible for coverage that won first-place awards from Sigma Delta Chi (national SPJ) for investigative reporting and non-deadline reporting, narrative writing from the American Association of Sunday & Features Editors as well as an award from the Nieman Foundation for fairness in coverage.

Most recently Patti has been working as a reporter covering energy and environmental issues at the , a statewide online news site based in Anchorage. Before that she was the co-founder of , an online news site covering government and politics in Arizona.

Patti has worked as a reporter at the Anchorage Times, Anchorage Daily News and Tacoma News-Tribune and was a key member of the team that won the 1990 Investigative Reporters and Editors award for an investigative series on the Exxon Valdez oil spill.