Nigel Jaquiss (born 1962) is an American journalist who won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, for his work exposing former Governor of Oregon Neil Goldschmidt's sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl while he was mayor of Portland, Oregon. His story was published in Willamette Week in May 2004.
Jaquiss graduated from Dartmouth College in 1984; he spent eleven years as a Wall Street and Singapore-based crude oil trader, working for Cargill, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Wanting a career change, he enrolled at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and got his master's degee in 1997. He began his journalism career in Portland in January 1998.
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As of 2005, Jaquiss was married with three children.[1]
Jaquiss almost lost his prize-winning scoop when he and his editor (Mark Zusman) decided to give Goldschmidt a full week to respond to the allegations the weekly was planning to make. Goldschmidt, who had previously told Zusman to "go get 'em" after a lunch in the middle of the paper's investigation, took his story to The Oregonian instead.
Zusman told the newspaper industry magazine Editor & Publisher that he and Jaquiss decided to post the story online immediately, so as not to risk being beat by the daily.
Jaquiss' Pulitzer represented only the third weekly paper that had been awarded a Pulitzer.[2]
Jaquiss later broke the initial news of Portland mayor Sam Adams' affair with an intern who may have been underage at the onset of their affair, on President Barack Obama's Inauguration Day.
In 2006 Jaquiss reported on allegations made by the Industrial Customers of the Northwest Utilities about improper tampering with the bond rating of the Portland General Electric corporation during the UE180 rate case in which PGE was attempting to raise its rates roughly %9, equivalent to roughly $200 million dollars in annual cash flow. According to the allegations which Jaquiss reported to the media, PGE finance officials attempted to improperly doctor the bond rating produced by Standard and Poor's and thereby increase the clout for the need to implement a rate hike.