Melinda Henneberger is the Metro columnist for The Sacramento Bee. She has covered criminal justice, local and state government, hospitals, social services, prisons and national politics. For 10 years, she was a reporter for The New York Times in New York, Washington, D.C., and Rome. As an opinion writer for The Kansas City Star, she won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2022, was a Pulitzer finalist for commentary in 2021, for editorial writing in 2020 and for commentary in 2019. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame and earned a graduate degree from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.