A native of Lexington and a graduate of Western Kentucky University, Tom Eblen began his career as an Associated Press correspondent in Tennessee and covered the nation’s largest case of insider bank fraud. As a regional reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he helped lead a Pulitzer Prize finalist team covering simultaneous prison riots in Louisiana and Georgia. He won a Best of Cox Award for his reporting on the collapse of Eastern Airlines and directed much of the Journal-Constitution’s business news coverage for six years. He returned home in 1998 and was managing editor of The Lexington Herald-Leader for 10 years. For two of those years, he also was acting executive editor. Under his leadership, the newspaper won many awards for news coverage and investigations. He asked to become a columnist in 2008 and made the assignment perhaps the best job in Kentucky journalism, covering a variety of often-overlooked topics and writing influential commentary.