ProPublica announced on Tuesday that Alison Fitzgerald Kodjak will be joining the masthead in September as assistant managing editor, national. She will oversee reporters and teams, bring ambition and imagination to projects and serve on the newsroom leadership team.
Kodjak comes to us from The Associated Press, where she has been the acting global investigations editor overseeing projects on some of the most pressing issues of the day, including the war in Ukraine, the pandemic and two presidential impeachments. The projects she has led include “Underfunded and Under Threat,” a look at how 20 years of cuts to state and local health systems left them ill-equipped to respond to COVID-19, and “War Crimes Watch Ukraine,” a multimedia investigation that included an original database of atrocities committed in the war based on open-source information, more than a dozen stories, two visual investigations and a 90-minute documentary film. The latter project received many honors including an Overseas Press Club award and the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights grand prize.
She also worked closely with PBS’ FRONTLINE and ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Productions to create documentary films from the AP’s investigative reporting. The film “Michael Flynn’s Holy War,” based on a three-part series Kodjak edited, won this year’s Peabody Award for best documentary.
Kodjak rejoined the AP in 2019 after a two-decade tour through the news industry, with stops at NPR, Bloomberg News, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Center for Public Integrity. As a reporter, she covered an array of topics from health policy and taxes to major news events including the 2008 financial collapse, the fight over Obamacare and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Her work as a reporter and editor has been honored with three George Polk Awards, a Gerald Loeb Award and the Overseas Press Club Malcolm Forbes Award. A graduate of Georgetown University and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Kodjak served as president of the National Press Club in 2019 and is also the co-author of the book “In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took It Down.”
“I’m delighted to bring into our senior leadership an editor with such broad experience in collaboration and investigative projects in the U.S. and overseas,” Editor-in-Chief Stephen Engelberg said.
“ProPublica is the standard-bearer for investigative reporting and accountability journalism. I’m both thrilled and honored to be joining this stellar team,” Kodjak said.
