Andrew Wolfson, longtime Courier Journal legal affairs reporter, to retire
Andy Wolfson, the longtime legal affairs reporter for The Courier Journal and its defunct sister publication, The Louisville Times, is retiring after 44 years of making lawyers and judges quake at the sound of his voice.
In more than four decades at the papers, he played key roles in winning Pulitzer Prizes in 1989 for coverage of the Carroll County bus crash that killed 27 and in 2020 for coverage of pardons former Gov. Matt Bevin issued at the end of his term.
Wolfson is the last remaining reporter or editor hired during the newspapers’ Bingham era.
He was awarded the Anthony Lewis Media award for his work that eventually led to Gregory Wilson being released from Kentucky’s Death Row after Wolfson chronicled the poor legal representation Wilson received and the fact that the key witness in the case was having an affair with another judge.
“Of all the people involved in this case, only two have behaved in a manner worthy of the ideals of our justice system: the courageous Franklin Circuit Court judge who stayed Wilson's execution; and Andrew Wolfson, the diligent Courier Journal reporter who exposed the glaring deficiencies in Wilson's trial,” U.S. Circuit Judge Boyce Martin Jr. wrote in 2010.
Martin wrote that Wolfson, “appears to have worked more conscientiously than many of the participants in this case, and he high-lights how virtually every branch of our justice system failed."
"Andy's retirement will leave a deep void in our newsroom. Not only has he contributed great reporting, provided institutional knowledge and mentoring and guidance for his younger peers, he's been an institution that our readers have grown to depend on for unique and interesting court coverage. He will be sorely missed," said Mary Irby-Jones, Courier Journal Executive Editor and Midwest Region Editor. "There are no words that truly honor Andy's 44 years of service as a journalist."
Wolfson grew up in Stamford, Connecticut, a suburb of New York City, before moving to New York as a teenager. He graduated from Colorado College and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He came to Louisville following stints as a cab driver in New York City and staff member on the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations in Washington, D.C.
The Louisville Times hired Wolfson in 1980 but he quickly became a hiring target of The Courier Journal, which was seen as the more prestigious – if not stuffier – of the city’s two publications.
The two newspapers, both owned by the Bingham family, shared a newsroom and competed against each other to break stories and win awards.
By late 1983, Courier Journal editors were ready to hire the brash, young reporter, but Wolfson’s editors at the Times didn’t want him to leave quite yet, demanding he give two weeks' notice, said Hunt Helm, a former editor and reporter at The Courier Journal.
That’s when Courier Journal city editor Bill Cox had a huge banner that said “Free Andy Wolfson” printed and hung on the CJ’s side of the newsroom.
By November of that year, Wolfson had earned his freedom and crossed the room to report on things like a doctor who was allowed to keep his license despite prescribing drugs that killed three patients, one who lost his license because of a drinking problem, and a banker who was fired because he was gay.
Over the years Wolfson would write about lawyers who violated ethics laws and the secrecy that often surrounded their cases along with corrupt judges. His work freed men from prison and brought about changes in how police officers do their jobs.
Wolfson has won an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for his coverage of Supreme Court cases from Kentucky. He’s also won awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors and Society of Business Editors and Writers.
Wolfson anchored the newspaper’s coverage of the 1985 Arrow Air flight that crashed shortly after takeoff in Gander, Newfoundland, en route to Fort Campbell, killing 248 army personnel and eight crew members. This coverage earned a George Polk Award for national reporting for him and his co-author, Daniel Rubin.
In 2005, he wrote a series of articles called "A Hoax Most Cruel," about a 19-year-old fast food worker in Mount Washington who was strip-searched, sexually assaulted and humiliated for three hours in a manager's office before a custodian figured out that the call from "Officer Scott" instructing the managers what to do, was a hoax.
It's the most-read story on the newspaper's website.
But some of his most fun reads were what reporters call “evergreens,” stories written around holidays when breaking news is often slow. Stories are written early and plugged into the newspaper whenever they are needed.
Over the years, Wolfson, who derided the idea of “evergreen” stories, wrote pieces that explored topics like “What do Jews do at Christmas?” and “What’s it like to share a name with someone famous, or even infamous?” One Christmas, he delved into the topic of women with men’s names.
Throughout his time at the newspapers, Wolfson became a master at writing profiles – more than 50 biographies of lawyers and judges and nearly as many of people who weren’t lawyers, by his estimation. And when editors needed complex stories turned around quickly, they often turned to Wolfson.
“I think he’s the best investigative reporter in Kentucky,” said Scott Cox, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor who has known Wolfson for more than 30 years. “He is fearless, he doesn’t back down, he just is going to write what the evidence is and where it leads him.”
When Wolfson wrote a profile of Cox in 2011, Cox said Wolfson interviewed so many people, it was like the background check the FBI conducted when he was hired as an assistant U.S. Attorney.
And when Wolfson asked questions, there was nothing off limits.
“I don’t think you can offend him and he feels like he can’t offend anyone,” Cox said. “There is no filter there and that, I think, works to his advantage.”
Just as he was unafraid to ask difficult questions of the people he covered, he was also known to ask difficult questions of his editors during staff meetings when they would roll out new changes or initiatives he feared would harm journalism.
His last day is Friday. His final story has already run. It was a piece on the Louisville pediatrician charged with hiring a hitman to kill her husband. The story reported that her lawyers said she hired a Brazilian faith healer to put a death spell on him.
Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Andrew Wolfson, longtime Courier Journal legal affairs reporter, to retire
