Annie Waldman

Reporter

Photo of Annie Waldman

Annie Waldman is a reporter at ProPublica covering health care. A piece she published with The New York Times on a New Jersey student debt agency prompted a new law and several new bills, aimed at increasing consumer protections for student borrowers and their families. Following her reporting on the largest accreditor of for-profit colleges, the U.S. Department of Education stripped the agency of its powers. Her reporting with Erica Green of The New York Times led to a federal civil rights investigation of discrimination against Native American students on a reservation in Montana.

In 2018, she contributed to the “Lost Mothers” series, which investigated the high rate of maternal mortality in the United States. This series won the 2018 Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, received a George Polk Award, a Peabody and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for explanatory reporting. Following her reporting on maternal mortality in New York, the city launched a $12.8 million initiative to reduce maternal deaths and complications among women of color.

She graduated with honors from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, where she was the recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Brown Institute Computational Journalism Award. Her stories have been published in The New York Times, the Atlantic, Vice, BBC News, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Consumer Reports.

She has been a finalist twice and won two awards from the Education Writers Association for her education reporting. She has won an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and was a finalist for the Loeb Awards for her reporting with Paul Kiel and Al Shaw on the racial disparity of wage garnishment.

Prior to joining ProPublica, she was a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Israel, where she reported on the plight of refugees from Darfur and Eritrea. She was also a recipient of a residency at Cité International des Arts in Paris, France. She had a documentary film in the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, on the lives of homeless high school students after Hurricane Katrina, which was later broadcast nationally on PBS. She produced "Phantom Cowboys," a documentary about male adolescence in small industry towns, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018.

Her PGP Key ID is E8F41874.

Sen. Warren Slams For-profit College Accreditor for ‘Appalling Record of Failure’

Warren released a detailed report today on embattled for-profit accreditor, ACICS, urging federal government to take “aggressive” action.

Accreditor of For-profit Colleges Agrees It Needs a Makeover

Embattled college accreditor ACICS announces that it will halt new applications for accreditation while it institutes reforms.

Attorneys General Come Down on Accreditor of For-profit Colleges

Citing ProPublica’s reporting, twelve attorneys general called on the federal Department of Education to revoke the recognition of the quasi-regulator.

How a For-Profit College Targeted the Homeless and Kids With Low Self-Esteem

Newly released emails and PowerPoints show first-hand Corinthian Colleges’ predatory practices.

Who’s Regulating For-profit Schools? Execs From For-profit Colleges

And many of them come from schools that have been under investigation.

Another VA Headache: Privacy Violations Rising at Veterans’ Medical Facilities

Deceased vets’ data has been sent to the wrong widows. Employees have snooped on the records of patients who’ve committed suicide. And whistleblowers say their own medical privacy has been violated. In response, the VA says patient privacy is a priority.

Methodology: How We Analyzed Privacy Violation Data

ProPublica followed the paper trail to find out the health care facilities that repeatedly violated patient privacy laws. Find out how we did it.

Few Consequences For Health Privacy Law's Repeat Offenders

Regulators have logged dozens, even hundreds, of complaints against some health providers for violating federal patient privacy law. Warnings are doled out privately, but sanctions are imposed only rarely. Companies say they take privacy seriously.

HIPAA Helper

Who is Revealing Your Private Medical Information?

Kids Get Hurt at Residential Schools While States Look On

Some residential programs for kids have settled on better ways to handle children. But the best practices are almost entirely self-imposed.

Department of Education Demands Greater Accountability from College Accreditors

Accreditation agencies have recently come under fire for failing to keep schools accountable. Now the Education Department is looking to change that.

Debt By Degrees

Use our interactive database to search new federal data on almost 7,000 schools in the U.S. to see how well they support their poorest students financially.

Who Keeps Billions of Taxpayer Dollars Flowing to For-profit Colleges? These Guys

Accreditation agencies are supposed to make sure that colleges are putting students in a position to succeed. That’s not happening at schools overseen by one accreditor in particular.

Methodology: How We Analyzed College Accreditation Data

How ProPublica crunched the numbers on college accreditors.

Reporting Recipe: How to Investigate Student Debt at Your College

Here are five stories you can do using ProPublica’s interactive database, Debt by Degrees. Each one comes complete with easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions.

How We Analyzed Racial Disparity in Debt Collection Lawsuits

An explanation of how we analyzed whether debt collection lawsuits disproportionately impact black communities.

The Color of Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods

In a first-of-its-kind analysis, ProPublica reveals that the suits are far more common in black communities than white ones.

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