JACKSON, Miss. -- A little more than a year ago, a young reporter named Anna Wolfe was the talk of this town and of journalism for a series of stories that won her the coveted Pulitzer Prize.
She was invited to an exclusive dinner at the Washington home of legendary reporter Bob Woodward. A handful of media suitors reached out to see if she was ready to ditch Jackson and move on to the big time. She had even been offered a free treatment to rid her yard of mosquitoes by a local pest service.
Wolfe, a reporter with Mississippi Today, a nonprofit, online news outlet, won the Pulitzer for detailing a disturbing $77 million welfare fraud scandal in the nation's second-poorest state, a scandal headlined by Mississippi's most famous athlete, Brett Favre.