Lizzie Presser
Lizzie Presser covers health, inequality and how policy is experienced for ProPublica.
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Lizzie Presser covers health, inequality and how policy is experienced at ProPublica. She was previously a contributing writer for The California Sunday Magazine, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, This American Life and others. Her story “The Dispossessed,” published in partnership with The New Yorker, won the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting and the John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism in 2020. She is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award and the National Magazine Award.
“I Want the Anger to Be Your Anger”: Bringing a ProPublica Investigation From Page to Screen
For his new documentary, “Silver Dollar Road,” Oscar-nominated director Raoul Peck spent years building on ProPublica’s coverage of how Black families are dispossessed of their land. “These were people I knew, these were situations that I knew.”
New Legislation Takes Aim at Hidden Foster Care
A ProPublica-New York Times Magazine story exposed a system with few legal protections for families. A first-of-its-kind bill aims to provide parents with free counsel when child protection workers try to move their kids without going to court.
She Wanted an Abortion. A Judge Said She Wasn’t Mature Enough to Decide.
As abortion access dwindles, America’s “parental-involvement” laws place further restrictions on teenagers — who may need to ask judges for permission to end their pregnancies.
Child Advocates Sue New York Over Proposed Shadow Foster Care System
Child advocates are suing New York for a program they say would create an unlawful shadow foster system that deprives families of their rights, saying a ProPublica investigation made the dangers “abundantly clear.”
A Multimillion-Dollar Settlement for a Young Woman Once Lost in the Shadow Foster System
Days after ProPublica featured Molly Cordell in a story about how a North Carolina county illegally tore her from her family and made her homeless, she got a $4 million settlement.
“They Took Us Away From Each Other”: Lost Inside America’s Shadow Foster System
Across the country, unregulated “shadow” foster care is severing parents from children — who often wind up abandoned by the system that’s supposed to protect them.
The Child Care Industry Was Collapsing. Mrs. Jackie Bet Everything on an Impossible Dream to Save It.
Jackie Thomas was $29,134 in debt and in trouble with state regulators. She hadn’t slept in days. If a judge ruled against her, she’d fail the mothers who could only keep their jobs thanks to the 24-hour child care she offered.
For Years, JaMarcus Crews Tried to Get a New Kidney, but Corporate Healthcare Stood in the Way
He needed dialysis to stay alive. He couldn't miss a session, not even during a pandemic.
New Bill Aims to End Racial Disparities in Amputations
Informed by a ProPublica article investigating why Black Americans were three times more likely to undergo diabetic amputations, five members of congress are working to fund screening and enhance diagnostics in an effort to save limbs.
Black Landowners Will Benefit From New Funding to Prevent Land Loss
A year after a ProPublica story highlighted problems for landowners who passed down “heirs’ property” without wills, a reformer won a MacArthur “genius” award and a nonprofit organization has received a flood of donations.