ProPublica announced Tuesday that John Sullivan will join its staff as a senior editor. Sullivan will help oversee projects in the Local Reporting Network.
Sullivan comes to the organization from The Washington Post, where he was an associate editor for long-term investigations. There, he designed and built a one-of-a-kind practicum in which American University graduate students worked under his mentorship with reporters on the investigative unit.
Under Sullivan’s leadership, students contributed to scores of investigative projects produced by the Post, including two that won the Pulitzer Prize: the coverage of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, for which they helped build and populate a database on rioters and congressional election deniers, and a 2015 investigation that documented and analyzed fatal shootings by police. Sullivan and his students contributed to five other projects that were finalists for Pulitzer Prizes.
Practicum students also tracked President Donald Trump’s lawsuits in the wake of the 2020 election, earning dozens of bylines. They helped find and assemble documents related to more than 280 brains held by the Smithsonian for a series on the “racial brain collection.” For the Post’s recent “Abused by the Badge” series, students gathered charging documents, court records, victim impact statements and sentencing data for officers accused of abuse. The Post has hired more than 20 former practicum students.
In addition to running the program, Sullivan wrote stories that investigated fatal shootings by police of people brandishing toy guns, use of a deadly maneuver by police to end vehicle pursuits and exploitative business practices in the bodybuilding industry.
Before joining the Post, Sullivan helped lead a team of reporters at The Philadelphia Inquirer that in 2012 won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for stories that exposed school district officials who had failed to intervene in the lives of troubled students and downplayed the violence that disrupted learning. He also was a Pulitzer finalist in 2009 for an Inquirer project that examined how the Environmental Protection Agency had been weakened by political interest.
Sullivan started his career at The Chicago Reporter and spent four years at The News & Observer, where he covered the Durham, North Carolina, courthouse. In 2003, he was an embedded reporter covering the war in Iraq for Knight Ridder.
“We are beyond delighted to have John Sullivan join the Local Reporting Network editing team,” said Sarah Blustain, assistant managing editor at ProPublica. “His sharp investigative approach and ability to coach reporters will be huge assets as we work with local newsrooms to bring out accountability stories with impact.”
“I’m excited to bring my experience to journalism’s most important mission, helping local reporters tell investigative stories that are crucial to their communities,” Sullivan said. “I’m honored to join an institution that has shown us all how an enduring effort to spotlight wrongdoing can improve the lives of citizens living in places large and small.”
