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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
F.C. Native Wins Pulitzer Prize with Washington Post BY DREW COSTLEY
FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS
Long before she was a key part of the Washington Post team that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, Falls Church native and George Mason High School class of 2006 alum Jennifer Jenkins started her journalism career at 1430 S. West Street, where she created an email newsletter called the 1430 Post to cover the ongoings at the home she grew up in. Jenkins, who is now a news researcher with the post, said that said that there were no Watergate scandals at her house to report on – most of the articles were news briefs – and that she said she thinks her parents, Beverly Burke and Don Jenkins, were “really amused” by it. She was right. “It was fun because it usually was pretty funny,” Burke said with a laugh. “And of course it was current for us at the time. We went through lots of things with our lives and she would put in her perspective, which was also good to know.” Her creation of the email newsletter was an outgrowth of her being a “voracious reader,” as she recalled, as a child, which included reading the newspaper she currently works for cover-to-cover every day. “I read to her before she knew how to read, every night. It was a religion for me,” Burke said.
“So [her] jumping to the Post was really not a stretch.” From that point on, Jenkins said, she has been a news junkie since she was a child. But she said that more than that influenced her to begin studying journalism and practicing it professionally at the University of Florida, where she worked for the studentrun newspaper The Independent Florida Alligator and received a Bachelor’s degree in 2010. “I’m a beltway kid. You’re aware of politics and local news. I mean, a lot of local news and D.C. goes national,” Jenkins said. “So you’re aware of all of this local news at a really early age and, in my case, one of my parents is a Republican and one is a Democrat, so I was exposed to a lot of political discussion at an early age. “In general, I feel that people who have grown up in the D.C. area are pretty aware of news….But as far as how Falls Church specifically influenced me, I think it was the strength of the school system.” Jenkins attended elementary, middle and high school at schools in the Falls Church City Public School system. She said she was a “pretty shy, bookish kid,” when she went Mason from 2002-2006, which is why journalism didn’t appeal to her initially. “I didn’t think that speaking to people would be my strength,” said Jenkins, who didn’t write
FALLS CHURCH NATIVE JENNIFER JENKINS does research for The Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” database at the Post’s of�ice at One Franklin Square. Jenkins, who graduated from George Mason High School in 2006, was part of a team at the Post that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in April. (P����: D��� C������/N���-P����) for The Lasso while she was at Mason. “It’s partially the reason why I ended up in my current position because I feel like my strengths lie more in researching and factchecking.” But when Jenkins’ teachers at Mason saw that she had an interest in something, they would
encourage her to pursue it. “In English or in history they would really push me,” Jenkins said. “And I think that made a really big difference.” Brian Walsh was Jenkins’ eighth grade English teacher at Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School and said he knew her as “Jenny.”
Walsh said that she was inquisitive in class, always had a book with her and gave insightful answers to questions that showed independent thought. “She was studious. She was hardworking,” Walsh said. “She was quiet and her abilities were
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Congratulations to the George Mason High School Class of 2016! Wishing the Class of 2016 a lifetime of happiness and good health! Don’t forget to check in with your doctor before you head off to your next opportunity!
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