Tony Bartelme

The Path

In Charleston, South Carolina, Tony Bartelme works as senior projects reporter and investigative reporter of The Post and Courier, a role that fits a method built on patience and close attention to detail. His reporting has stayed with complicated subjects long enough to follow their full shape, moving from neighborhood concerns to larger global questions without losing the local ground they came from. That kind of range gives the work a clear trade value: specific in its facts, broad in its implications.

The Work Today

As a projects reporter in Charleston, South Carolina, for The Post and Courier, Tony Bartelme has reported on mercury and coal ash, topics that call for persistence, precision, and a long view. Those stories have also carried beyond city limits, into terrain where environmental, scientific, and human stakes overlap. The reporting is built to track systems as well as events, showing how a single inquiry can open into a wider set of consequences.

Signature

Tony's signature dishes include Rising Waters and A Surgeon in the Village. The titles themselves point to the range in his reporting: one suggests pressure, change, and a world in motion; the other suggests a human-scale story shaped by place, need, and the fragile arithmetic of access. Together, they mark a style of work that is carefully reported, materially grounded, and built to move from the specific to the larger stakes.

In Their Words “Thanks to a newspaper that values deeply reported issues, I've traveled the world to write about plankton, climate change and the global shortage of surgeons.” “I've been fortunate to earn journalism's highest honors, including awards from the Gerald Loeb, Scripps and National Press foundations.” The words point to a practice built on depth and reach: long-form reporting that can travel from plankton to climate change to the global shortage of surgeons without losing its structure. They also make clear the scale of the beat—science, environment, and health reporting handled with the same steady discipline.

Acclaim

Tony's honors include Pulitzer Prize finalist, Gerald Loeb award, Scripps award, Sigma Delta Chi award, and award from the National Press Foundation. Taken together, those recognitions reflect work that is reported with care, executed with discipline, and tracked to stories that matter well beyond the immediate page.