Valerie Bauerlein is a national correspondent for The Wall Street Journal based in Raleigh, N.C., where she covers national affairs with a special interest in small-town America and Southern politics, economics, and culture. She spent nearly three years reporting on the Murdaugh family saga, work that culminated in her book The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh and the Fall of a Southern Dynasty (Ballantine, 2024) — a cinematic, deeply reported account of Murdaugh’s dramatic downfall and the entrenched forces of power and corruption in coastal South Carolina.

Since 2008, Valerie has covered the South Carolina presidential primaries for The Wall Street Journal. Her reporting has spanned both natural and manmade disasters — from Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast and the mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston to the deadly condominium collapse in Surfside, Fla. She has also written feature stories on subjects as varied as NASCAR, roller coasters, beauty pageants, and Waffle House.

Earlier in her career at the Journal, Valerie covered the beverage and snack industry from Atlanta, reporting on companies such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, as well as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Wachovia during the regional bank boom and the financial crash of 2008. She began her career at The Shelby (N.C.) Star before serving as a cops reporter at the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal, a legislative reporter at The State (Columbia, S.C.), and congressional correspondent for the News & Observer (Raleigh).