Steve Fainaru, a Bay Area native who won a Pulitzer Prize at the Washington Post, was named today the managing editor of the F. Warren Hellman-funded Bay Area News Project, which has become The Bay Citizen.

Fainaru was born in Mountain View and graduated from Redwood High School in Larkspur. He has been based in the Bay Area for the Post since 2002 and currently lives in El Cerrito.

Fainaru won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 2008 for his 10-part series on widespread abuses involving Blackwater and other private security contractors in Iraq.

Fainaru began his career with the Mercury News, where he covered sports. He later worked at the Boston Globe before moving to the Washington Post. He is the author of two books, “Big Boy Rules: American Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq” (Da Capo, 2008) and “The Duke of Havana Baseball, Cuba< and the Search for the American Dream”(Villard, 2000).