Spencer Ackerman won a 2012 National Magazine Award for reporting on biased FBI training materials and shared in a 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the 2013 global surveillance disclosures.
19 Facts About Spencer Ackerman
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Spencer Ackerman graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1998 and Rutgers University in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy.
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Spencer Ackerman worked for the New York Press, a free alternative weekly.
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Spencer Ackerman worked at The New Republic until 2006, when he started a blog titled Too Hot for TNR and was fired over what he described as irreconcilable ideological differences.
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Spencer Ackerman next began writing for The American Prospect as well as Talking Points Memo.
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In December 2007, Spencer Ackerman joined The Washington Independent as a senior fellow covering national security and foreign policy.
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Spencer Ackerman joined Wired magazine's Danger Room in June 2010, a national security blog.
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Spencer Ackerman's comments were made while writing for The Washington Independent.
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Spencer Ackerman left Firedoglake in December 2010 to host the Attackerman blog independently.
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In 2011, Spencer Ackerman won the National Magazine Award for Digital Media for his series on exposing the use of Islamophobic material to train recruits in counterterrorism at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
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Spencer Ackerman was criticized by Richard Silverstein in Eurasia Review and Philip Weiss in Mondoweiss.
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In June 2013, Spencer Ackerman joined The Guardian as a national security editor, initially at their Washington bureau before relocating back to New York.
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Spencer Ackerman contributed to several stories on the NSA's surveillance programs based on these leaks, leading to The Guardian winning the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
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Alongside his colleague Zach Stafford, Spencer Ackerman was a 2016 finalist for the Online New Association's Online Journalism Awards for their reporting on a previously little-known detention facility run by the Chicago Police known as Homan Square.
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The investigation began when Spencer Ackerman profiled the US military's employment of Richard Zuley, a Chicago Police investigator, to develop interrogation techniques on detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
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Spencer Ackerman joined The Daily Beast as a senior national security correspondent in May 2017, reuniting with his former editor from Wired, Noah Shachtman.
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In 2021, Spencer Ackerman stepped down at The Daily Beast and launched Forever Wars, a Substack newsletter focused on international politics through a socialist lens, critiquing American militarism and exceptionalism.
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In 2019, Spencer Ackerman co-hosted, with Laura Hudson, the "Citadel Dropouts," a Wired podcast about the final season of Game of Thrones.
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In 2023, Spencer Ackerman co-wrote, with Evan Narcisse, "Waller vs Wildstorm" a DC Black Label comic mini-series.