Before joining the Naples paper in October 2014, Blackledge was Public Service and Investigations Editor at The News Journal in Wilmington, Del.
[citation needed] He worked as a reporter for 26 years before joining the Delaware newspaper, including working as a reporter for The Associated Press in Washington D.C. [citation needed] While working for The Birmingham News, he won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting for a series on alleged nepotism and cronyism in Alabama's two-year college system.
[citation needed] He began his career that year with the Associated Press, and later worked for The Journal Newspapers in suburban Washington, D.C., Education Daily and The Mobile Register.
[1] While with the News, Blackledge contributed to Alabama AP Managing Editors Association Award-winning stories on the 2003 conviction of Bobby Frank Cherry for the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
[citation needed] The system's chancellor was fired, federal and state investigations opened, and new safeguards for public accountability promised in the wake of the exposé.