Dean Pritchard

Courts reporter

Someone once said a journalist is just a reporter in a good suit. Dean Pritchard doesn’t own a good suit. But he knows a good lawsuit.

Since covering his first trial for the Brandon Sun in 1999, Pritchard has logged more time in a courtroom than many of the veteran lawyers whose cases he has followed.

After leaving Brandon, Pritchard spent 12 years on the court beat for the Winnipeg Sun, returning to the beat in 2019 after a brief stint as a Free Press copy editor.

In covering cases that often capture people at their lowest, Pritchard strives for fairness and accuracy, without sacrificing the humanity at the core of the stories. In the words of one of his favourite literary gumshoes, Harry Bosch, “Everybody counts or nobody counts.”

When not running from one courtroom to another, Pritchard has been pepper-sprayed by police, spent an afternoon as a shopping mall Santa, jumped out of a perfectly good airplane and chugged a six-pack before noon to help Mounties test their new roadside screening device — all in the service of (he hopes) a good story. It’s a living.

In his off hours, Pritchard enjoys plucking away at his six string while trying to memorize all 14 verses of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Pritchard believes a great hat always beats a great haircut and that writing about oneself in the third person is a bit… weird.

Editors told Pritchard his bio should be at least 250 words, but as readers may have noticed, he’s not one to run off at the mouth.