LYNN has earned a reputation as a “bulldog” when it comes to investigating wrongdoing. In 1998 she was nominated for a Pulitzer for exposing abuse of power by one of Virginia's most popular legislators, Billy Robinson. To delay court cases, Robinson, a defense attorney, would tell judges he had legislative business. This allowed him to carry a heavier — and more lucrative — caseload. But he used the excuse so many times that he single–handedly delayed more cases in one year than all the other lawyers, judges, and prosecutors in the city of Norfolk. Meanwhile, the mothers of dead sons — who lived in his legislative district — did not see the killers come to trial. And criminals, out on bond for years awaiting trial, committed new crimes, sometimes on Robinson's own constituents.
In 1994, Lynn received numerous awards, including the prestigious Distinguished Writing Award from the National Association of Black Journalists, for a series of investigative articles that led to the release of a man who spent 149 days in jail for a crime he did not commit. She beat out writers at the Philadelphia Daily News and the Miami Herald to snag this award that salutes the nation's top journalistic talent.
In 2004, Lynn took on the powerful televangelist Pat Robertson, infiltrating Regent University's communications department to expose how professors were repeatedly mistreated and forced to leave long-term, tenured positions without cause.
In 2005, she exposed wrongdoing at Smithfield Foods' North Carolina hog processing plant, the largest in the world. Lynn plumbed government documents, primarily rulings by the National Labor Relations Board, to expose intimidation of workers — including physical beatings and attempts to incite a riot — by Smithfield's secret police to keep out the union. She traveled with union organizers to workers' homes to interview black and Latino laborers.
“One of the paper's BEST investigative reporters.”
— Author and journalist, William F. Burke Jr., Editor, the Virginian-Pilot
“Lynn Waltz has an AMAZING ABILITY “ to infiltrate an organization and gain the trust of key people in order to get the story. And, she lays a solid foundation with painstaking research and documentation. The reason people trust her? She keeps confidences and she cares deeply for the disenfranchised. She truly represents that old standard of journalism: Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
— Tom Robotham, Editor, Portfolio, The Alternative Voice of Hampton Roads