About David Freed
Born on an Air Force base in Georgia and raised the son of a street cop in Colorado, David spent nearly 20 years as an investigative journalist, the majority with The Los Angeles Times. He served as The Times' lead police reporter, reported from the Middle East during Operation Desert Storm, was named an individual finalist for the Pulitzer Prize’s Gold Medal for Public Service, the highest award in American journalism, and shared in a Pulitzer for coverage of the 1992 Rodney King riots.
After leaving The Times, David worked briefly as an investigator and associate field producer for the Los Angeles bureau of CBS News before selling a screenplay to 20th Century Fox. He subsequently spent 10 years writing movies in Hollywood while moonlighting as a contractor in the federal intelligence community, working principally with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency.
Since then, David has been a frequent contributor to national magazines, particularly Air & Space Smithsonian, where he is a contributing editor. He’s also written extensively for the Atlantic where his expose, “The Wrong Man,” was short-listed by the American Society of Magazine Editors as one of the best feature stories of 2011.
David is a special assistant professor of journalism and Media Hall of Fame member at Colorado State University, his alma mater. In 2018, he was honored as the university’s College of Liberal Arts Distinguished Alumnus. He holds a Master of Liberal Arts degree in Extension Studies from Harvard University, where he also teaches creative writing.
When not teaching, writing, or flying his small airplane, you can find him playing Frisbee with his energetic Australian shepherd, Ellie, in Santa Barbara, California, where David lives with his beautiful partner, Elizabeth, a clinical psychologist.
Some say Santa Barbara looks suspiciously like the town of Rancho Bonita, which Cordell Logan calls home.
Whether true or not, David isn’t saying.