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Ken Armstrong

Ken Armstrong was a reporter at ProPublica.

Ken Armstrong was a reporter at ProPublica. In 2022, his story with Raquel Rutledge on the intersecting lives of a landlord and a tenant won the National Magazine Award for feature writing. In 2021, he reported with Meribah Knight on a Tennessee county where hundreds of children were illegally jailed. In 2018, his reporting with Christian Sheckler on the criminal justice system in Elkhart, Indiana, led to the police chief’s resignation and to two officers being convicted of felony civil rights charges.

In his career, Armstrong has won or shared in four Pulitzer Prizes. On five other occasions he was a Pulitzer finalist.

At The Marshall Project, Armstrong partnered with ProPublica’s T. Christian Miller on a story about a woman who was charged with lying about being raped. That story won the 2016 Pulitzer for explanatory reporting and became a “This American Life” episode, a book and an eight-part Netflix series, “Unbelievable.” The radio episode and Netflix series both won Peabody Awards.

At The Seattle Times, Armstrong won the 2012 Pulitzer for investigative reporting for a series with Michael Berens that showed how the state of Washington steered Medicaid patients to a cheap but unpredictable painkiller linked to more than 2,000 deaths. He also shared in two staff Pulitzers for breaking news.

At the Chicago Tribune, Armstrong’s reporting with Steve Mills on the failures of Illinois’ death penalty system helped prompt the state’s governor to halt executions and commute 167 death sentences, the largest blanket clemency in the modern era of capital punishment.

In 2009, Armstrong received the John Chancellor Award from Columbia University for lifetime achievement. His book with Nick Perry, “Scoreboard, Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity,” won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for nonfiction. Armstrong has been a Nieman fellow at Harvard and the McGraw professor of writing at Princeton. He is a graduate of Purdue, where, in 2018, he received an honorary doctorate.

Accused in Elkhart

The Chief Prosecutor in Elkhart, Indiana, Is Accused of Misconduct for Making Contradictory Allegations

A man serving 55 years has filed a motion to overturn his conviction, arguing that the state prosecuted him for giving a gun to a drive-by shooter even though another man had already pleaded guilty to giving the same gun to the shooter.

by Ken Armstrong,

Local Reporting Network

The New Sweatshop

Customer Service Company That Worked With Disney, Comcast Will Pay $2M to Workers to Settle Lawsuit Over Pay Practices

The D.C. attorney general settled with Arise Virtual Solutions for misclassifying workers as “independent contractors.” The action followed a ProPublica story that outlined the violations.

by Justin Elliott and Ken Armstrong,

Help ProPublica Report on Education

ProPublica is building a network of educators, students, parents and other experts to help guide our reporting about education. Take a few minutes to join our source network and share what you know.

by Ken Armstrong, Jennifer Berry Hawes, Nicole Carr, Jodi S. Cohen, Asia Fields, Eli Hager, Alec MacGillis, Jeremy Schwartz, Jennifer Smith Richards and Aliyya Swaby,

What Happens When Prosecutors Offer Opposing Versions of the Truth?

An unusual recent court decision offered harsh criticism of a behavior that has left dozens of men condemned to death since the 1970s, spotlighting cases where prosecutors offered claims that contradicted what they said elsewhere.

by Ken Armstrong,

Juvenile Injustice, Tennessee

How “The Kids of Rutherford County” Sets Investigative Reporting to Music

Experimentation was key in creating the score for our four-part narrative podcast series, produced in collaboration with Serial.

by Ken Armstrong,

Local Reporting Network

Accused in Elkhart

In 2018, We Reported on an Abusive Cop. He Was Just Sentenced to a Year in Prison.

Five years after ProPublica and the South Bend Tribune partnered to investigate police misconduct in Elkhart, Indiana, reporter Ken Armstrong reflects on the incremental but powerful impact journalism can have on communities.

by Ken Armstrong,

Local Reporting Network

Accused in Elkhart

Another Police Officer Pleads Guilty to Punching Handcuffed Man

The conviction is the latest development in the extensive fallout from an investigation into the criminal justice system in Elkhart, Indiana, by ProPublica and the South Bend Tribune.

by Ken Armstrong,

Local Reporting Network

The Landlord & the Tenant

Near Milwaukee, two lives intersect in a house that catches fire. What came before and after shows there’s one kind of justice for those who own and another for those who rent.

by Raquel Rutledge, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica,

Juvenile Injustice, Tennessee

Juvenile Detention Center That Illegally Jailed Kids Now Will Answer to an Oversight Board

The board is being put in place after a Nashville Public Radio/ProPublica investigation detailed how Tennessee's Rutherford County was jailing children at rates unmatched in the state.

by Meribah Knight, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica,

Local Reporting Network

Post-Roe America

Draft Overturning Roe v. Wade Quotes Infamous Witch Trial Judge With Long-Discredited Ideas on Rape

Justice Alito’s leaked opinion cites Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century jurist who conceived the notion that husbands can’t be prosecuted for raping their wives, who sentenced women to death as “witches,” and whose misogyny stood out even in his time.

by Ken Armstrong,

Juvenile Injustice, Tennessee

Tennessee Judge Who Illegally Jailed Children Plans to Retire, Will Not Seek Reelection

Since 2000, Judge Donna Scott Davenport has overseen juvenile justice in Rutherford County. Following reporting from Nashville Public Radio and ProPublica, public outcry and a bill seeking to oust the judge, Davenport announced her retirement.

by Alexis Marshall and Meribah Knight, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, and Ken Armstrong, ProPublica,

Local Reporting Network