Kelley Kelley Benham French

Kelley Benham French joined The Washington Post investigations unit as their first-ever narrative accountability editor in 2024.

In her role she heads a team with the mission of harnessing immersive reporting, rigorous investigative work and exceptional writing to produce stories that hold powerful forces to account on matters of urgent national interest. She is also a resource for journalists across the newsroom as a coach, mentor, sounding board and collaborator.

Prior to joining the Post, French served as senior editor for storytelling at The Dallas Morning News. She has served as a professor of practice in journalism in the Media School at Indiana University, and worked for three years as senior editor for narrative and special projects at USA TODAY, anchored in the investigative team.

Prior to USA TODAY, French edited narrative and investigative projects on contract with The Oregonian, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Tampa Bay Times and other outlets. Her contract editing led to a Pulitzer finalist in local reporting and winners of the Best American Newspaper Narrative competition, the Kavli Science Medal, Scripps Howard, National Headliner and Dart awards, among others.

From 2002 to 2012, Kelley was an enterprise editor and writer at the Tampa Bay Times, where she was a Pulitzer finalist in feature writing for Never Let Go, the story of the extremely premature birth of her daughter, Juniper. At the Times, she edited two stories that were Pulitzer finalists: Winter’s Tale, the account of a baby dolphin with a prosthetic tail, and For Their Own Good, a revealing exploration of decades of abuse at a boys’ reform school.

An alum of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, she has taught narrative journalism in six countries and 14 states. With her husband, the Pulitzer-winning journalist and professor Thomas French, she is the author of Juniper: The Girl Who Was Born Too Soon.