Kathleen Johnston

2025

By Steve Key

Kathleen Johnston’s career followed the journalistic maxim: “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.” In her current academic career, she is training Indiana University students to do the same as the next generation of investigative journalists.

Before becoming the founding director of Indiana University’s Michael I. Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism, Johnston received multiple national and regional prizes, including Emmy awards, awards from the Investigative Reporters and Editors and an Alfred I. duPont Award.

Raised in Gary, Johnston graduated from IU in 1982 with degrees in journalism and political science. At the Indianapolis News, she worked on many of the biggest stories in the city. She examined the Lilly Endowment’s role in shaping Indianapolis and exposed the City-County Council majority caucus practice of deciding issues in secret prior to any public meeting.

In 1987, the latter series earned her and The News the national Scripps-Howard Foundation’s Edward Willis Scripps Award for Service to the First Amendment. It was the first of numerous national awards  Johnston would receive for investigative reporting – and the story led to a change in Indiana’s Open Door Law to limit what could be done in caucuses.

At The News, journalist Gerry Lanosga joined her to form a two-person team. They broke stories on questionable city contracts given to campaign contributors and on a drunken party in the city’s luxury suite in the Indianapolis Indians’ new Victory Stadium. That party included the chief of police and ended with several police officers getting into an altercation with other fans while leaving the baseball game.

In 1997, Johnston moved from print to broadcast journalism, joining NBC-affiliate WTHR in Indianapolis. There she and Lanosga managed a five-member investigative team. Their stories included a data-driven documentation of the large percentage of DUI cases thrown out because police officers were failing to appear in court; the revelation that Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, then pushing for a half-billion dollar publicly financed stadium, had suffered overdoses and undergone residential treatment for prescription drug abuse; and an expose of how the guardians of the world’s then-richest woman, Ruth Lilly, were exploiting her.

Lilly was the heiress to the Eli Lilly fortune, but had been declared incapable of managing her billion-dollar holdings. Lilly’s court-appointed guardians spent $1.6 million on six trips, including one to London and Paris with site inspection trips that included relatives of the staff. They spent nearly $7,000 on a French tutor for the staff, although Lilly already spoke French. Lilly didn’t know some of the people included in the trips.

Johnston’s WTHR work brought her an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award (silver baton) –  broadcasting’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. The award’s citation in part reads:

“The reporters challenged a major Indianapolis bank and a powerful local law firm by questioning lavish trips and campaign contributions made by Lilly’s guardians. While Lilly’s guardians maintained she was too fragile to appear in court, they took her on sightseeing trips abroad with an entourage of their families and friends. WTHR’s reporters combed court documents and interviewed legal experts about the arcane subject of guardianship. Their reports led to intensified court insight of Ms. Lilly and her fortune that continues more than a year after the stories aired.”

Gov. Joe Kernan awarded Johnston with a Sagamore of the Wabash in 2004 for her longtime reporting in Indiana, a fitting sendoff for her transition to CNN.

As a network investigative producer, Johnston and CNN correspondent Drew Griffin won a Gracie Award in 2005 for their reporting on suspected euthanasia deaths of 20 or more critically ill patients during a hectic three-day evacuation of a flooded Memorial Hospital in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The duo also was honored with a national Emmy in investigative reporting and a National Press Foundation’s Everett Dirksen Award for a series in 2006 detailing Congress’ chronic misuse of spending earmarks, exposing millions of wasted taxpayers’ dollars. They also revealed the strategy of tying up cases for years in court by multiple major insurance companies to avoid paying on claims from minor traffic accidents.

Their stories created changes. Congress began to post earmark requests online and the insurance companies were forced to publicly release documents revealing their bad-faith approaches to fighting injured accident victims. 

In his letter nominating her to the hall of fame, senior investigative correspondent Griffin wrote about the New Orleans hospital story and his work with Johnston: “The story was a bombshell, but to me, simply another day at the office under Kathleen’s direction. In our years together, we exposed massive insurance scams and countless examples of government waste, exposed an ineffectual Federal Air Marshal Service and changed the way congressional earmarks are publicly recorded.”

Johnston also produced a critically-acclaimed documentary on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, “The Footnotes of 9/11,” which focused on stories from the investigating commission report’s actual footnotes.

Additional honors while she was at CNN included the George F. Peabody Award and two National Headliner Awards in the same year for two different stories.

From CNN, Johnston joined CBS News’ Washington Bureau in 2015 as an investigative producer, but left the next year to help family members deal with illnesses. These included her mother, Rose, whom Johnston helped care for until Rose’s death.

In 2017, Johnston was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award from The Media School at Indiana University. In 2019, she became the founding director of the school’s Arnolt Center for Investigative Reporting. She created the center from scratch into a first-rate nonprofit news organization that produces outstanding investigative journalism while training the next generation of investigative reporters.

Hundreds of students have worked in the center, earning bylines and credits on projects produced on their own and with more than a dozen professional news organizations such as USA Today, The Indianapolis Star and Gray Television. The center is part of both the U.S.-based Institute for Nonprofit News and the Global Investigative Journalism Network.

“As a long-standing member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, she has been a featured panelist at national conferences and has mentored countless young journalists while meeting the demands of a top-tier investigative producer,” wrote Duane Pohlman, national investigative correspondent for Spotlight on America and chief investigative reporter/anchor for WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, in his nominating letter.

“When we started the (Arnolt) center, we sought to hire someone who could make an immediate impact, and Kathleen didn’t disappoint,” wrote her former investigative colleague Gerry Lanosga, now associate professor and interim dean for academic affairs for The Media School. “She leveraged her unrivaled journalism experience across platforms with a deep desire to serve the community, and she truly helped us create something special for journalism at IU and beyond.”