Katherine Blunt

Katherine Blunt is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and author of California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric and What it Means for America’s Power Grid.

Katherine has written about utilities and renewable energy for the Journal since 2018. Her coverage of PG&E, reported in close collaboration with two colleagues, was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and earned a Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism. The series also won the 2019 Thomas L. Stokes Award for energy and environmental writing, as well as a silver Barlett & Steele award through the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism.

Prior to joining the Journal, Katherine was a business reporter at the Houston Chronicle, where she spent nearly a year reporting a three-part series on how Joel Osteen built Lakewood Church into one of the nation’s largest by deploying sophisticated marketing and branding tactics taken from the corporate playbook. Texas Associated Press Managing Editors awarded the series second place in feature writing in 2018.

Katherine also covered transportation for the San Antonio Express-News, where she investigated why the first public-private toll road in Texas, as well as many others financed prior to the recession, went bankrupt several years into operation. Texas Associated Press Managing Editors and Editor & Publisher both awarded the investigation first place in business journalism in 2017.

Katherine grew up in Maryland and attended Elon University. She lives in San Francisco.