ProPublica has selected five new partner newsrooms and local journalists for its Local Reporting Network. This is the second group selected as part of the organization’s 50 State Initiative. The reporters are Margaret Coker of The Current, Becca Savransky of the Idaho Statesman, Jessica Schreifels of The Salt Lake Tribune, K. Rambo of Street Roots and Adam Friedman of the Tennessee Lookout. Coker, Savransky and Schreifels are all former participants in the LRN. This group will begin their investigative projects on Oct. 1.
The Current (Georgia) — Margaret Coker
Coker is the co-founder and editor of The Current, Georgia’s only nonprofit investigative news organization. The Current’s accountability journalism has changed Georgia state law and won numerous journalism prizes. This year, Coker and the ProPublica Local Reporting Network team won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Award for best business reporting for an online news organization for their investigation into title pawn lending, an industry that is illegal in dozens of states but that has carved out a lucrative niche in Georgia’s subprime debt market. Coker and ProPublica’s reporting revealed that Savannah-based TitleMax uses deceptive practices to trap tens of thousands of Georgians into triple-digit-interest-rate loans, even after these low-income families file for bankruptcy.
Idaho Statesman (Idaho) — Becca Savransky
Savransky is the education and equity reporter at the Idaho Statesman in Boise. Over the past three years, she has focused on the obstacles students with disabilities face in getting the resources they need, the conditions of school buildings across the state and the effects of bills passed by the legislature on students and teachers. In 2023, she covered the challenges that often kept school districts from repairing and replacing their deteriorating buildings as part of ProPublica's Local Reporting Network; her reporting helped spur a $2 billion investment in school facilities around the state. Previously, her reporting on the use of restraint and seclusion in schools prompted a bill that banned using the practice as discipline. Before joining the Statesman, she worked as a reporter for SeattlePI. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science from Northwestern University.
The Salt Lake Tribune (Utah) — Jessica Schreifels Schreifels is an investigative reporter for The Salt Lake Tribune. She was a member of the Tribune team awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for its reporting on the punitive treatment of sexual assault victims at Brigham Young University. She is a two-time Livingston Award finalist, for investigating mistreatment in Utah’s booming “troubled teen” industry and a data-driven series on Utahns shot by police while experiencing a mental health crisis. She was also a co-host and reporter for “Sent Away,” an award-winning podcast about the state’s teen treatment programs. In 2023, as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, she investigated barriers that Utahns face when reporting that they were sexually assaulted by a medical worker; that reporting prompted a change to Utah law and led to criminal charges against a health care provider.
Street Roots (Oregon) — K. Rambo
Rambo is the editor-in-chief of Street Roots, an investigative newspaper sold by people experiencing homelessness and poverty in Portland, Oregon. Rambo began in the role in 2021, the same year the Society of Professional Journalists awarded the paper first place in general excellence among small newsrooms in the Pacific Northwest. Under Rambo’s leadership, the paper has won or placed in multiple competitions for reporting on foster care placement stability and racial equity, among other topics. Rambo previously produced award-winning investigative journalism as a public safety and higher education reporter at the Albany Democrat-Herald/Corvallis Gazette-Times. Rambo also covered police accountability and transparency during the 2020 protests in Portland as an intern at The Oregonian, including writing a story cited in a lawsuit against former President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security.
Tennessee Lookout (Tennessee) — Adam Friedman Friedman is a reporter with the Tennessee Lookout covering money and state government. He started as one of four reporters at The Jackson Sun, where he led an award-winning series looking into the city’s financial mismanagement and corrupt dealings with its local minor league baseball team. The investigation resulted in a state comptroller investigation, leading to a court requiring the team to pay taxpayers back for wrongful reimbursements. At the Lookout, he was part of a team that won a Society of Professional Journalists’ Green Eyeshade Award for its coverage of the Covenant School shooting and its subsequent fallout. Friedman has also worked at The Tennessean and is a digital journalism graduate of Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.
ProPublica launched the Local Reporting Network at the beginning of 2018 to boost investigative journalism in local newsrooms. It has since worked with some 80 news organizations. The network is part of ProPublica’s local initiative, which includes offices in the Midwest, Northwest, South and Southwest, plus an investigative unit in partnership with The Texas Tribune.
