Ted Bridis has been teaching political, breaking news and investigative reporting and public records at the University of Florida since 2018 as the Michael and Linda Connelly senior lecturer in investigative reporting. He is the founding editor of Fresh Take Florida, a news service that operates out of the College of Journalism and Communications and distributes its award-winning public policy reporting for publication in more than 100 professional news outlets across Florida. He was the Society of Professional Journalists’ College Adviser of the Year in 2022, and his students three times have placed in the Top 5 in the national Hearst Investigative Journalism Awards, the equivalent of the collegiate Pulitzers, including once as an overall winner. He is an informal adviser to the UF campus newspaper, the Independent Florida Alligator. Bridis also is on a task force for Investigative Reporters & Editors for improving teaching investigative reporting in colleges, and he consults as an expert witness on subjects including ethics, best newsroom practices, and libel and defamation.

Prior to teaching at UF, Bridis spent nearly 30 years working for The Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal, including 11 years as head of AP’s Pulitzer-winning Washington investigative team. He led AP’s team that was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for coverage of President Trump’s treatment of immigrant children. His AP team won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting for revealing the NYPD’s illegal surveillance of Muslims. He witnessed Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on 9/11 and was first to report the crash to editors at the Wall Street Journal, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. He won the Shadid and SPJ national ethics awards for how AP handled disclosures that CIA analysts secretly sent a retired FBI agent on an unauthorized mission to Iran, where he was kidnapped and later died. He was one of six journalists whose phone records the FBI seized in a leaks investigation over AP’s reporting that al Qaida had developed a new bomb to smuggle aboard Western airliners. He was first to discover Hillary Clinton’s email server in her basement in 2015, and led the team of reporters whose work in 2016 put President Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, in federal prison for illegal foreign lobbying until Trump pardoned him. He holds a journalism degree from the University of Missouri.