Chris Kelly

Chris is a columnist, blogger, editor, writing coach and old-school muckraker for The Times-Tribune. He received a degree in journalism and creative writing from Keystone College in LaPlume in 1997 and began his career with the Times-Tribune the same year. He has been a clerk, regional correspondent, police reporter, feature writer, general assignment reporter, columnist and editor. Chris has won numerous awards, including eight first-place awards for columns from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Keystone Press and the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2014, he won first place for Distinguished Writing and first place for best columns in the Keystone Press Awards. His coverage of local soldiers as an embedded journalist in Iraq won several reporting awards, and his five-page “Pilgrimage” special section about visits to the sites of the 9/11 terrorist attacks won second place for distinguished writing in all circulation categories in the 2004 Keystone Press Awards. While covering Scranton neighborhoods in 1999, he was part of a team that won a Society of Professional Journalists’ Spotlight Award for investigative reporting for a series of stories examining drug activity at Village Park, a low-income housing development. The months of reporting revealed a grim scene of brazen drug trafficking, sporadic violence and terror against neighbors in and around the apartment complex. Chris is from Beaver, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He lives in Dalton with his wife, Chrisann, senior technical editor for Times-Shamrock’s new media department, and their cats, Typo, Shadow, Smudge, Puck, Timmy, Silvio and Paulie Walnuts. [email protected] (570)-212-9484 Read his award-winning blog at timestribuneblogs.com/kelly