Former Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander is an award-winning journalist and news industry leader who has been a reporter, editor and Washington bureau chief during a career thatspans five decades.

He has reported from more than 50 countries and won or shared in prizes for distinguished Washington correspondence and investigative journalism.

As a strong open government advocate, he has written and spoken extensively about the public’s right to know. He helped launch the national Sunshine Week initiative, which each year focuses public attention on freedom of information and the dangers of excessive government secrecy.

Mr. Alexander grew up in a small town in western Ohio and graduated with a journalism degree from Ohio University. He started reporting while still in college, working summers in Australia for the Melbourne Herald. Also before graduating, he spent a summer as a correspondent covering the war in Vietnam and covered the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Before joining The Washington Post in early 2009, he had spent his entire career with the Cox Newspapers chain. He began at a Cox paper in Dayton, Ohio and in 1976 was transferred to the Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau, where he covered Congress and politics. After reporting from the nation’s capital and extended overseas assignments, he moved into editing roles beginning in the late 1980s, first as foreign editor and then as deputy chief in the Cox bureau.

In 1997, he was named bureau chief, overseeing a Washington staff and foreign bureaus in London, Jerusalem, Beijing, Moscow, Mexico City, Baghdad and the Caribbean, as well as domestic bureaus in New York and on the West Coast. During his time as chief, the Cox Washington bureau shared in the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Mr. Alexander has served on numerous boards related to journalism.

After several terms on the board of the American Society of News Editors, he served as a board member of the American Society of News Editors Foundation, including a three-year term as its president.

He is a longtime board member of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which helps foreign journalists who have been subjected to attacks, arrests and harassment by repressive regimes. He served on CPJ’s Executive Committee and chaired its Development Committee during a period of unprecedented growth.

In addition, Mr. Alexander is a member and past officer of the Gridiron Club, Washington’s oldest and most prestigious organization of journalists. He also has served on the board of the National Press Club.

And he is a member of the advisory council for the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University, which has awarded him its Medal of Merit as a distinguished alumnus. In 2011, he was inducted into the Scripps College of Communication Hall of Fame, which recognizes lifetime achievement, and also was named Ohio University’s Alumnus of the Year.

In 2013, he received an honorary doctorate of communication from Ohio University and was its undergraduate commencement speaker. For his work on behalf of open government, Mr. Alexander in 2006 was inducted into the First Amendment Center’s National Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame.

He has served two terms on the Accrediting Committee of the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications.

Mr. Alexander currently is a Visiting Professional with the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University, where he has taught journalism ethics and helped foster media innovation and entrepreneurship. He also co-chairs the Scripps College of Communication Washington program.

He is married to Beverly Jones, an attorney, consultant and author. They live in Washington, D.C. and Rappahannock County, Virginia, where Mr. Alexander chairs Foothills Forum, an innovative and thriving nonprofit that produces award-winning, locally focused in-depth journalism.