John Woestendiek
John Woestendiek (c. 1954 – June 24, 2020) was an American journalist and author. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1987 for a series in The Philadelphia Inquirer that helped prove the innocence of a man convicted of murder.
After his journalism career, he ran Ohmidog!, a blog about the bond between people and dogs. He wrote two non-fiction books: Dog, Inc.: The Uncanny Story of Cloning Man’s Best Friend and Travels With Ace.
Woestendiek was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to William and Jo Woestendiek, both involved in newspapers. He finished Sanderson High School in Raleigh in 1971 and earned a degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1975. His early work included the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson and the Kentucky Reader in Lexington. He joined The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977 as an investigative reporter and later became the Inquirer’s Metro columnist in 1997. He also wrote for the Charlotte Observer and The Baltimore Sun from 2001 to 2008.
In 2007 he served as the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana. He adopted Ace, a rescue dog, in 2005, and Ohmidog! grew from his love of dogs. He filmed a short documentary about Ace’s ancestry and wrote Dog, Inc. He and Ace retraced John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, which became Travels With Ace (2012) and earned him a Nightline appearance.
His marriages were to Jennifer Mitchell and Erika Hobbs. He and Jennifer adopted Joseph Yoon Tae from South Korea in 1992. His son Joe died in 2018. He was hospitalized on June 7, 2020, after a stroke and died on June 24, 2020.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 10:52 (CET).