Daniel Gilbert joined the Bristol Herald Courier as a staff writer in December 2007. He covers legal affairs in Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. His reporting duties also include substantial enterprise projects, from conducting a yearlong investigation of the natural gas industry to leading a staff project that found widespread irregularities in the financial disclosure statements of elected officials.

Prior to moving to Bristol, Gilbert, 27, worked as a freelance writer in the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, and in Washington, D.C. for English and Spanish-language news outlets. Trilingual in English, French and Spanish, Gilbert's work has been published or carried by the Dallas Morning News, the Christian Science Monitor, The Associated Press, Reuters, Scripps Howard News Service, The Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Washington Posts's Spanish-language weekly, El Tiempo Latino.

His work has also been featured by the Poynter Institute and in the Investigative Reporters and Editors Journal. The Center for Investigative Reporting named his series on mineral rights in Southwest Virginia one of the best investigative projects of 2009.

Gilbert got his start in journalism at the Potomac News in Woodbridge, Va., covering immigration. He has won numerous state and regional journalism awards in Virginia and Tennessee, and received a certificate from the IRE computer-assisted reporting workshop in August 2009. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 2005 with a B.A. in international studies.