Somewhere in the page-turning Nancy Drew teenage detective novels, a little 11-year-old girl from Shreveport, who–like Drew– had an inquisitive streak, charted her own path of seeking the truth. Along the journey, C.E. Byrd’s Class of 2005 Amy Brittain has amassed an array of accolades including a 2016 Pulitzer Prize award and a 2023 LSU Hall of Distinction award–just to name a few.

Now, Brittain will add C.E. Byrd Hall of Famer to the list when she is inducted on Thursday, June 5th at the Shreveport Convention Center.

Individual tickets to the C.E. Byrd Hall of Fame Dinner are $100. Table sponsorships, which include eight tickets, are $1,500. Tickets may be purchased at byrdhighalumni.org by clicking the yellow tab at the top of the website.

At the same website, you will be able to find information on tickets and table sponsorships for Byrd’s Centennial Celebration, which will be held on Saturday, June 7th at the Shreveport Convention Center.

“I’m one of those annoying people who kind of knew from the time that they were a kid what they wanted to do.” Brittain, an investigative journalists for The Washington Post, shared with LSU President William F. Tate IV almost two years ago on his podcast On Par with the President. “And I decided when I was 11 that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

Truth has certainly been better than the fiction she read as a young girl. She parlayed a love for writing and “nosey” nature into a brilliant, award-winning career.

Before she came to The City of Byrd, Brittain began cutting her journalistic teeth in middle school, which according to the staff at the time was one of the only middle schools in Louisiana with a student paper.

At 3201 Line Ave., it became evident that Brittain wasn’t just on the staff of the High Life, C.E. Byrd’s student newspaper, for an easy “A”. She continued to hone her craft.

She was going places.

The next stop for Brittain was Baton Rouge where she studied at LSU’s Manship School of Mass Communications and wrote for the university newspaper–The Reville.

“It kind of gave me the blessing to go be nosy, to ask questions, to figure out how things work,” Brittain said of her role early on at The Reville. “One of my very first stories involved the chancellor at the time. It gave me the chance to ask difficult questions. As a reporter, there’s no better training than to get in and to have that type of experience from the get-go.”

Her work at The Reville did not go unnoticed.

In fact, a sophomore biological sciences major would approach her under an oak ree at an honor’s ceremony at Dodson’s Fountain in the Quad one day, and compliment her on a series of stories she was doing where LSU student government leaders were buying Blackberry phones for themselves and using student fees to pay for the expensive phones.

“It was called Blackberry Gate and it was The Reville’s scandal of the day,” Brittain said. “He came up and complimented me on the coverage,” Brittain said. “We became friends, and now we’re married.

Brittain married Arman Sheybani. The couple, who live in Arlington, VA, have a son, Jasper.

That moment is just one of many she remembered–the tears rolling down her face–as her mom drove her around the campus one last time after packing up her things and heading off to a summer internship covering the San Diego Padres for MLB.com.

Soon after, Brittain landed at Columbia University where she worked on her Master’s degree and went into a specialized investigative reporting program. During her time in the program, Brittain exposed police officers and firefighters who were abusing anabolic steroids and human growth hormone.

“It kind of took me into a general investigative reporting path, and I put the sports writing dreams aside,” Brittain said.

After a stint with the Star Ledger in New Jersey, in 2013 Brittain became the youngest person ever hired onto the investigative team at The Washington Post.

In 2016, Brittain and her colleagues at The Post looked into fatal police shootings across the country. What the investigative team, led by Wes Lowry, discovered was that there was no way to track fatal police shootings because police departments across the nation didn’t have to report it to the FBI. It was voluntary for them to report shootings.

So The Washington Post created their own database.

“Being a part of that project, being a part of something that was so significant in the public’s understanding of law enforcement shootings, it’s a tremendous opportunity,” Brittain said. “It’s also such a heavy lift with the newsroom, you know, claiming to be a part of it. I just want to be clear that I played a minor role.”

While Brittain and her Washington Post investigative team understood the scope of what they were working on during the Pulitzer prize-winning reporting, that is not always the case when Brittain has worked on other stories.

“One thing that I always make clear to my sources, to people who are participating in the story is that I cannot predict the future,” Brittain said. “There are stories that I thought would have a tremendous amount of change where nothing happened. There are other stories that resulted in laws being changed with significant overhaul and reform. I never tried to steer the outcome one way or the other. Our only fidelity is to the truth and uncovering the truth.”

In her latest endeavor, Brittain has shown her versatility as a journalist in leading The Washington Post’s first long-form investigative podcast– Canary: The Washington Post Investigates. The seven-part podcast, which debuted in the fall of 2020 told the story of two female sexual assault victims who refused to remain quiet when the justice system failed them.

“Whenever I used to describe my job, I would say I’m a print reporter, I’m a newspaper investigative reporter, and now I’ve come to believe that we shouldn’t live in one medium,” Brittain said. “I will tell a story in the best format and the most powerful format that it needs to be in to tell it.”

You can hear the rest of the story from Brittain at the C.E. Byrd Centennial Hall of Dinner of Thursday, June 5 when Brittain is inducted along with Faith Jenkins (Class of 1994), Meredith Duncan (Class of 1998), Jacob Davis (Class of 2004), Annia Jenkins (Class of 2004), Jordan Davis (Class of 2006), Charles Johnson (Class of 2008), Darrell Jones (Class of 1975), David Matlock (Class of 1973), Pamela McPherson (Class of 1978), Leslie Morgan (Class of 1974) , John Parsons (Class of 1959), and Max Watson (Class of 1963). Neil Johnson (Class of 1972) and Joseph Zaffater (Class of 1929) will be inducted posthumously. Faculty members inducted will be Kathy O’Neal and Roy Keene (posthumously)💜💛🐝💜💛#AlwaysDeepWithinOurHearts ... See MoreSee Less

Come out tonight and support our Byrd Yellow Jackets as they take on the Shreve Gators! Home game - Byrd students get in free with ID! 💜⚾️💜 ... See MoreSee Less

Beautiful day for some C.E. Byrd 🥎 vs. PCA! Sting ‘Em!💜💛🐝🥎💜💛#AlwaysDeepWithinOurHearts ... See MoreSee Less