Ziva Branstetter.
Former Frontier editor in chief Ziva Branstetter was named on Monday as one of nine inductees to the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame.
Branstetter helped launch The Frontier in 2015 before leaving to work for Reveal, a California-based nonprofit, in 2017. Last year she joined the Washington Post as Corporate Accountability Editor.
Before all that, Branstetter spent 21 years at the Tulsa World, serving multiple roles, including as city editor, enterprise editor and as one of the top investigative journalists in the state.
Her career began at the Guthrie Daily leader, where she worked until 1989 when she was hired by The Tulsa Tribune. When that paper closed, she moved to the Philadelphia Daily News before joining the Tulsa World in 1994.
The World is where she made her biggest mark.
“During 22 years at the World, I wrote stories that resulted in a handful of new state laws, the disbanding of an entire state board, got a few corrupt people put in prison and a few innocent or overcharged people let out,” Branstetter said. “I covered the Oklahoma City bombing, both Moore tornadoes and the Joplin Tornado. I’m proud of my coverage of those disasters, even though they weren’t investigative per se, because I worked very hard to distinguish our coverage and find compelling human stories. They were also very challenging to cover in terms of the conditions on the ground.”
While at The World, Branstetter was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for reporting she and Cary Aspinwall did on the botched execution of Clayton Lockett.
She also did some of the earliest reporting linking wastewater injection to the state’s increasing earthquake totals.
While at The World she began her reporting on the scandal over Robert Bates and former sheriff Stanley Glanz. That reporting carried over to The Frontier and ended with Glanz being indicted and resigning from office and Bates convicted of second-degree manslaughter.
While at Reveal she reported on the striking number of women incarcerated in Oklahoma prisons and led an investigation of Tesla, which resulted in a national radio award and sparked a change in California law requiring improved reporting of workplace injuries.
Branstetter won the 2016 FOI Oklahoma Ben Blackstock Award and also won a lawsuit against former Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin when a judge ruled Fallin had broken the state’s open records law.
Other inductees to the Oklahoma Journalism Hall of Fame 2019 class include M.J. Alexander, Mary Bishop-Baldwin, Brian Blansett, Chris Casteel, Bob Dotson, Wayne Greene, Griff Palmer, and Timothy E. Talley.
Dr. Don Betz and Dr. W.Roger Webb will receive Lifetime Achievement awards at the ceremony, which will be held at 11:30 a.m. April 25 at the University of Central Oklahoma’s Nigh University Center.
