Investigative Journalist and former Tennessean Reporter Trent Seibert Dies at 47

Trent Seibert, an investigative reporter and editor whose career included a stint covering the statehouse for The Tennessean, died this week at his home in Houston. He was 47 years old. 

The Texas Monitor, a nonprofit news outlet he founded in 2017 and led as editor, reports that Seibert apparently died of natural causes. 

Before the Monitor, Seibert founded Texas Watchdog. Those who knew him have highlighted his belief in the nonprofit public-service model for journalism. In a Facebook post reacting to Seibert's death, former Nashville Post political blogger and current communications director for Lt. Gov. Randy McNally A.C. Kleinheider writes: "His libertarian streak came not from any considered reading of right-wing philosophy but from a natural distrust of the powerful and a skepticism toward the integrity of large institutions. He saw before many others that if true journalism was to survive it would need to be as a public service, not a business."  

Erik Schelzig at The Tennessee Journal highlights Seibert's investigative work while covering then-Gov. Phil Bredesen's administration for The Tennessean.  

Seibert and then-colleague Brad Schrade in 2005 broke several stories in the Tennessean about problems with the Tennessee Highway Patrol during the administration of then-Gov. Phil Bredesen, including that prominent people were given “honorary badges” that some saw as get-out-of-jail-free cards and that promotions within the THP predominantly went to troopers with Democratic connections.

Bredesen declared early in the series that he often learned of problems at the THP and Safety Department from reading the newspaper, and that he was “tired of The Tennessean doing out work for us.”

Seibert's friend and colleague at the Monitor,

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Among his many reporting coups was the national story he helped break while working for the Tennessee Center for Policy Research in 2007.

“Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy,” the story read. “Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service.”

Later, Miller notes what Seibert told him recently: “This is what I love doing, and I can’t believe that we can get paid to uncover public officials doing bad things.”