The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting has been awarded a grant from ProPublica to join its Local Reporting Network.
KyCIR is one of six newsrooms announced today as new members of the ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network project. The national nonprofit newsroom selected a KyCIR investigation from nearly 140 applications from local newsrooms around the country to join the collaborative.
“KyCIR is thrilled for the chance to work with ProPublica and devote significant resources to a project with the potential to highlight problems that affect Kentuckians, and spur meaningful change,” said Kate Howard, managing editor for KyCIR.
The lead reporter on the ProPublica collaboration will be R.G. Dunlop, an award-winning investigative reporter whose work has exposed government corruption and resulted in numerous reforms. ProPublica will reimburse Dunlop’s salary for the next year as he works on the project.
Dunlop won a Peabody Award last year for “The Pope’s Long Con,” a five-part investigation and podcast. He is a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was twice a member of teams that won George Polk Awards while a reporter at the Courier Journal. He has been with KyCIR since its founding in 2013.
Dunlop will continue to work in KyCIR’s newsroom, but ProPublica will offer extensive guidance and support on reporting and editing, engagement and data analysis. The work will be published by ProPublica simultaneously to its broadcast on 89.3 WFPL and published on KyCIR.org.
The other newsrooms selected and reporters are:
- The Arizona Republic, Alden Woods
- The Capital (Annapolis, Maryland), Danielle Ohl
- The Frontier (Tulsa, Oklahoma), Brianna Bailey
- Miami Herald, Carol Marbin Miller
- Oregon Public Broadcasting, Tony Schick
Dunlop and Howard will work on the project with Local Reporting Network editor Zahira Torres. Before ProPublica, she was editor of the El Paso Times and enterprise editor for USA Today Network’s Texas/New Mexico newspapers. During her tenure, Torres was part of a team that developed and edited “The Wall: Untold Stories, Unintended Consequences,” which won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.
“I am excited to work with these newsrooms to realize their ambitious visions for local journalism,” Torres said. “We reviewed a highly competitive field of applications and we’re delighted to work on this diverse range of important projects.”
Other newsrooms recently awarded grants from ProPublica through the Local Reporting Network include the Courier Journal, WNYC, the Charleston Gazette-Mail and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.