John Carreyrou was born to French journalist Gérard Carreyrou and an American mother. He grew up in Paris.[3] Carreyrou graduated from Duke University in 1994 with a B.A. in political science and government.
After graduation, he joined the Dow Jones Newswires. In 1999, he joined The Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels.[4] In 2001, he moved to Paris to cover French business and other topics such as terrorism. In 2003, he was appointed the deputy bureau chief for Southern Europe. He covered French politics and business, Spain, and Portugal.[5] By 2008, he was the deputy bureau chief and later bureau chief of the health and science bureau in New York.[6]
In late 2015, spurred by a deep investigation carried out by Eleftherios Diamandis, Carreyrou began a series of investigative articles on Theranos, the blood-testing start-up founded by Elizabeth Holmes, that questioned the firm's claim to be able to run a wide range of lab tests from a tiny sample of blood from a finger prick.[7][8][9] Holmes turned to Rupert Murdoch, whose media empire includes Carreyrou's employer, The Wall Street Journal, to kill the story. Murdoch, who became the biggest investor in Theranos in 2015 as a result of his $125 million injection, refused the request from Holmes saying that "he trusted the paper's editors to handle the matter fairly".[10] In May 2018, Knopf published Carreyrou's book-length treatment of the topic, Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.[11] Carreyrou also features prominently in a documentary about Theranos called The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley.[12]
In August 2019, Carreyrou left the Wall Street Journal, opting for paid speaking engagements that are banned by the newspaper. For future plans, he commented "I want to keep writing non-fiction books for the second part of my career".[13][14]
In 2021, Carreyrou released a podcast called "Bad Blood: The Final Chapter" covering the trial of Elizabeth Holmes.[15]
In March 2022, Hulu released The Dropout, a miniseries about Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal, where Carreyrou is portrayed by Ebon Moss-Bachrach.[16]
In 2003, Carreyrou shared the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting with a team of Wall Street Journal reporters for a series of stories that exposed corporate scandals in America.[18][19] Carreyrou co-authored the article Damage Control: How Messier Kept Cash Crisis at Vivendi Hidden for Months, published Oct. 31, 2002.[20]
In 2004, Carreyrou shared the German Marshall Fund's Peter R. Weitz Senior Prize for excellence in reporting on European affairs with a team of six Wall Street Journal journalists.[22] In the five-part series titled The Disintegration of the Trans-Atlantic Relationship over the Iraq War Carreyrou contributed the article In Normandy, U.S.-France Feud Cuts Deep.[23] Published on February 24, 2003, while Carreyrou was based in Paris, the article explored how France's Normandy region, site of the D-Day landings, was caught between gratitude for the U.S. role in World War II and France's opposition to war in Iraq.[24]
In 2015, Carreyrou shared the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting and the Gerald Loeb Award for Investigative with a team of investigative reporters at The Wall Street Journal for "Medicare Unmasked", a project that forced the American government in 2014 to release important Medicare data kept secret for decades, and in a sweeping investigative series uncovered abuses that cost billions.[25][26][27] Carreyrou co-authored four articles in the series: Taxpayers face big tab for unusual doctor billings,[28]A fast-growing medical lab tests anti-kickback law,[29]Doctor 'self-referral' thrives on legal loophole[30] and Sprawling medicare struggles to fight fraud.[31]
^"Pulitzer Prize Winners". The Pulitzer Prizes – Columbia University. 2003. Retrieved Jan 31, 2016. 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting: Staff of The Wall Street Journal. For its clear, concise and comprehensive stories that illuminated the roots, significance and impact of corporate scandals in America. (Moved by the jury from the Public Service category.)
^"Annual Report 2003"(PDF). The German Marshall Fund of the United States. 2003. p. 8. Retrieved Jan 31, 2016. Peter R. Weitz Journalism Prizes. GMF awards two prizes annually for excellence in reporting on European and transatlantic affairs. A team of writers from BusinessWeek, led by David Fairlamb and John Rossant, were awarded the 2003 senior Peter R. Weitz Journalism Prize of $10,000 for their in-depth coverage of the expansion of the European Union to include countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The junior prize of $5,000 was awarded to The Wall Street Journal's John Carreyrou for his detailed coverage of the downfall of Vivendi Universal SA and its chairman, Jean-Marie Messier.
^"2004 Peter R. Weitz Senior Prize"(PDF). The Wall Street Journal. The German Marshall Fund of the United States. 2004. Archived from the original(PDF) on March 25, 2017. Retrieved Jan 31, 2016.
^"Pulitzer Prize Winners". The Pulitzer Prizes. Columbia University. 2015. Retrieved Jan 31, 2016. 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting: Eric Lipton of The New York Times For reporting that showed how the influence of lobbyists can sway congressional leaders and state attorneys general, slanting justice toward the wealthy and connected. & The Wall Street Journal Staff For "Medicare Unmasked," a pioneering project that gave Americans unprecedented access to previously confidential data on the motivations and practices of their health care providers.
^ ab"Long Island University Announces 67th Annual George Polk Awards in Journalism". Long Island University. Feb 14, 2016. Retrieved Feb 20, 2016. The award for Financial Reporting will go to John Carreyrou of The Wall Street Journal whose investigation of Theranos, Inc. raised serious doubts about claims by the firm and its celebrated 31-year-old founder, Elizabeth Holmes, that its new procedure for drawing and testing blood was a transformational medical breakthrough in wide use at the firm's labs. Carreyrou's well-researched stories, reported in the face of threats of lawsuits and efforts to pressure some sources to back off of their accounts, led to a reevaluation of Theranos' prospects among investors and have been followed by regulatory actions against the company and widespread discussion that publications and institutions from Fortune and The New Yorker to Harvard and the White House may have been too quick to hail Holmes, a Stanford dropout whose personal wealth at the height of her startup's rise was an estimated $4.5 billion, as a success story in the tradition of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
Previously the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting, No Edition Time from 1953–1963 and the Pulitzer Prize for Local Investigative Specialized Reporting from 1964–1984
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