Two years ago, The New York Times hosted the inaugural class of its Local Investigations Fellowship, a one-year program for journalists from local newsrooms led by former Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet. Since launching in 2023, fellows have published more than 45 stories across the country at no cost to the local outlets.
The work has been expansive, featuring reporting from Hawaii to rural Mississippi, and acute in its spotlighting of issues that deeply affect the communities involved. A 2024 partnership with the Baltimore Banner resulted in a series on how Baltimore’s became the drug overdose capital of the United States. The series became the basis of similar reporting efforts in cities nationwide, and in May, The Banner won a Pulitzer Prize in the local reporting category.
The Banner/Times series led to immediate action: Maryland’s state health department sent a “cease-and-desist” order to a treatment provider that was worsening the overdose problem. Other fellowship investigations have led to passed legislation and greater oversight of people in positions of power.
The Institute spoke with Chris Davis, deputy editor of the Local Investigations Fellowship, to learn more about the program’s goals, challenges, and successes in its first two years.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Dean Baquet wrote in a memo that the lack of resources for investigative reporting is a “crisis deep within the larger crisis of the collapse of local journalism.” Can you tell me more about the need for this specific fellowship right now?
Davis: You look around the country in places that used to have strong investigative teams, or at least editors and reporters who had done it before or were granted the time to do it. Those resources have been shrinking. Dean saw this, and investigative reporting has a special place in his heart.
I think the idea was: The Times is doing well, and this is a place that [The Times] can step in and try to help.
Fellows are selected on a rolling basis, and you have guidelines for applicants online. But can you briefly explain what you’re looking for in an ideal candidate for the fellowship?
Davis: There are two things we’re looking for: a really good story that we think might not get told if we weren’t providing some resources, some time, and some guidance. And we’re looking for reporters who we can help to learn and elevate their skill level.
We’re not really going around the country trying to find the most polished investigative reporter that exists and say, “Hey, let’s work together for a year.” We’re looking for folks who have some experience but really haven’t had the opportunity to spend a year on a project — or just need to do it more so they can learn more about how you investigate, how you bulletproof stories, and that kind of thing.
When we’re choosing fellows, it’s mostly based on the story they pitch. And we’re looking for something that is investigative, that feels like it would be a really important story to tell in that people are being impacted. The issue that they’re exploring is a significant one that really has negatively affected someone’s life. So those things are kind of the basics.
And then we’re also about local. We want a story that is going to resonate locally, that has a sense of place to it. This isn’t just an issue that you drop in and any community might be struggling with, but this is something that’s different about this local place, either based on the decisions that people in power made or the laws that are in effect, or the actors that are perpetrating the crime.
Has The Times ever reached out to initiate the process, or is it always the other way around?
Davis: It’s by-and-large been the latter, where people are pitching a story idea to us. We have, once or twice, done it the other way, and we’ve talked about doing it where we see something that we feel like is under-covered, or that we’d love to see get even more attention.
The best example that comes to mind is, in our first year, the water crisis was going on in Jackson, Mississippi, where the water system was, over and over, basically crashing, and people were unable to have running water in their homes. It wasn’t safe to drink. These were tens of thousands of people, sometimes, who were without water, and there was coverage, for sure. But we were looking at the story and thinking, well, the why of it wasn’t quite getting answered.
We talked to folks in a number of newsrooms there about the idea, and what we heard back was, “We’ve spent a lot of resources on this water crisis, and we don’t really have a lot more resources to spend on it. And what’s left to do is likely to take so long that we’re not really thinking that we’re going to do it.”
So we took that from the newsrooms and our own interest in the story, and went and found a freelancer, Sarah Fowler, who’s fantastic. She’s on the ground in Jackson. She’s been a reporter there for many years. She was freelancing at the time, and we sort of pitched to her, like, “What would you think about spending a year just digging into the Jackson water crisis?” And that’s how we wound up working with Sarah.
How do you measure success for a program like this?
Davis: Part of the reason investigative reporting is in jeopardy at the local level is that there’s a lack of ability to take risks. And there’s inherent risk when you do investigative work because you don’t know how long it’s going to take. You don’t really know what you’re going to find. We go into this understanding and embracing this idea that what you come out with at the end may not be what you thought you were going to get at the beginning. And we’re not judging anyone because of that, because that would kind of defeat the purpose. We want to have a safe place where you can come in and take some risks.
And so we don’t have a lot of metrics about what the story looks like in the end and how many pieces you publish, and even anything around readership, or how many folks come to your story.
What we think about is — at the end of the day — did we produce a story that probably wouldn’t have gotten done? Any story that’s got some importance and is well done is a success if we can say that, I think.
The second thing is, we’re looking for growth in the reporter. Do we leave them in a place where they can do more than they did when they came to us? We’re not really keeping a KPI on whether someone’s learned this, that, or the other, but we want to be able to articulate, this is what they’ve learned, this is what the story meant to the community.
Having said that, we all pay attention to, did anyone read the story and how well did it do? And we look at where it ran. One of the things that we try to do, in addition to just publishing the story in The Times and the home newsroom, is get other local outlets to publish it.
Are there examples of fellows’ reporting that led to a direct response?
Davis: The stuff I’m most familiar with is the Mississippi work on the “Goon Squad” and any other sheriffs that we’ve investigated. We’ve now had three fellows in Mississippi, and we’ve also partnered with other Mississippi Today reporters to produce work. There have been laws passed to try to bring sheriffs under a little more oversight. There have been investigations that had sort of stagnated — federal investigations into a sheriff or two — that expanded or sort of came back to life. They seemed to have been dead, and they came back after our stories ran. And there certainly has been a big community response.
The thing that sticks with me: I was down in Jackson for an event with Mississippi Today, and there were reporters who were talking about the Goon Squad work — which, it’s about how a group of deputies in one sheriff’s department were going around and literally torturing people they suspected of being drug dealers or drug users to get information. And they were doing terrible, terrible things over many, many, many years. And so all that came out with the reporting that these folks did.
I was at this community event where they were talking about it, and a woman from the community stood up and talked really eloquently about how everyone in Rankin County was talking about it, everyone was shocked, and that they all felt like this couldn’t stand, that something had to happen. It was gratifying to see that because you don’t often get that sort of view from someone who’s not in the know — just a regular person who took it upon themselves to come and stand up and say that to the reporters. It was a pretty cool moment.
The fellowship is celebrating two years — What hurdles did you all face in this early stage, and are there new challenges you’re preparing to deal with entering year three?
Davis: It has been really interesting to hear these reporters from across the country talking about what it’s like to put The New York Times by their name. Suddenly, they’re in their own community, reporting locally, and they get one reaction when they say, “I’m a reporter for The Poughkeepsie Daily News.” And they get another reaction when they say, “I’m a reporter for The New York Times.” And I do think the political situation the country’s in, how divided it is, is something they have to navigate.
Tell me more about that. What do reporters say they’ve experienced when they’ve mention they’re reporting for The Times. Are they getting more access or are sources more reticent to talk?
Davis: There are pluses and minuses. In Mississippi, I think there was definitely the feeling from the reporters that it could be harder, at least for some, because they would run into people and they’re like, “You’re from New York?” And they would see or feel that reaction. On the other hand, I do think at least some of our fellows would tell you that when they went to get someone on the phone or they went to try to get a public record from a from a government office, that they they felt it was easier having The Times’ name behind them and then the legal support to try to, when appropriate, either rattle a saber or actually go sue.
Can you share any hints about what stories the fellows are currently working on?
Davis: I don’t want to give away anything that I shouldn’t, but I will say, we’re continuing in Mississippi. We’re continuing to dig into the sheriffs there, including the sheriff’s department in Rankin County, where the Goon Squad was operating. … Digging into law enforcement in Mississippi — and this will be the case across the South — has been fruitful in the sense that there are a lot of things going on. There’s a lot of power there that is unchecked. And if you can really dig deep and find the people who’ve been impacted by this, you can tell amazing stories, and that’s what’s happened in Mississippi. I think they have more of that to come, because the folks who are experiencing mistreatment at the hands of the police there aren’t done telling their stories.
Tags: local journalism
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