Michael M. York

Michael M. "Mike" York (born April 10, 1953) is an American journalist and attorney. In the early 1980s, as the Washington correspondent for the Lexington Herald-Leader, he co-authored a series of exposes on improper cash payoffs to University of Kentucky basketball players which won him and his co-author, Jeffrey A. Marx, the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Michael M. York was born on April 10, 1953, in High Point, North Carolina.^[1] In 1974 he graduated from the University of Kentucky, where he majored in journalism, and four years later graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law.^[2]

He wrote for the Durham Morning Herald and the Legal Times of Washington and served as an attorney for the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission before joining the Lexington Herald-Leader in 1979.^[3] In 1981 he became the paper's Washington correspondent.

It was during this time that, along with Jeffrey A. Marx, he authored "Playing Above the Rules", a series of articles exposing improper cash payoffs to University of Kentucky basketball players and improper offers made to recruits by other universities.^[4][5] The authors interviewed 33 former Wildcats – some of whom spoke to Marx and York with the goal of ending the abuses – and the paper sued the university and the state of Kentucky under freedom of information laws to get detailed information, including the names of specific violators, for the series.^[6]

The initial reaction to the series was strongly negative: subscribers and advertisers boycotted the Herald-Leader, local media outlets heavily criticized the outlet and accused it of "sensationalism", and the authors received death threats.^[7][8][6] However, the piece earned Marx and York the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, and led to NCAA regulation changes.^[3][4]

أصبح يورك فيما بعد مراسلاً استقصائياً في صحيفة واشنطن بوست ، حيث كشف عن التحقيقات المتعلقة بالنائبين الأمريكيين دان روستنكوفسكي وكارول هوبارد . وبدأ ممارسة مهنة المحاماة الخاصة به في عام 1994. ^{[ 5 ]}

وهو متزوج من ريبيكا تود ولديه ثلاثة أطفال، إميلي وجيمس وناتالي. ^{[ 1 ]}