Michael E. Ruane is a general assignment reporter on the Local staff of The Washington Post. He also covers developments on the National Mall, such as the building of the new memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and historical topics, such as the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. He was part of the local team that earned the Post’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in 1991-92. Formerly with the Philadelphia Inquirer, he has been at the Post since 1997.