Len Ackland

Len Ackland is the founding director of the Center for Environmental Journalism (1992) and brought the Ted Scripps Fellowships in Environmental Journalism to CU Boulder in 1996. His most recent book is a memoir, Don’t Bury the Lede: From Trauma and Vietnam to Journalism (July 2026). He previously wrote Making a Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West (1999), the first investigative history of the controversial nuclear bomb factory south of Boulder. Before joining academia in 1991, Ackland was editor and de facto CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists magazine, which he guided to a National Magazine Award in 1987 for its special issue on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. Prior to that he was a reporter at newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and the Des Moines Register, where he won the George Polk Award in 1978 for his documentation of mortgage lending discrimination, called “redlining,” against minorities in Des Moines.