The McGraw Fellows
2024
Five veteran journalists have been named the latest recipients of the McGraw Fellowship for
Business Journalism. Each of the winning projects will receive a grant of up to $15,000.
The new McGraw Fellows will explore subjects ranging from the emerging market for
biodiversity credits, to fraud schemes that target tribal corporations and the impact of chemicals used in manufacturing semiconductors.
The McGraw Fellowships, an initiative of the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Center for
Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City
University of New York, were created in 2014 to support in-depth stories that “Follow the
Money.” The Fellowships enable experienced journalists to produce ambitious investigative or
enterprise stories on critical issues related to the global economy, finance and business.
The first McGraw Fellows were named in 2014. Nearly 80 journalists have since won McGraw
Fellowships. More than 100 journalists working across a wide array of subjects applied for the
latest round of Fellowships. In addition to financial backing, the McGraw Center provides
Fellows with editorial guidance and assistance placing their stories with media outlets.
The winners were selected through a competitive process. The next deadline to apply is March
31, 2025; Fall 2025 applications will be due October 6, 2025. For more information,
please consult the main McGraw Fellowship page and our FAQ. You’ll find examples of our
previous Fellows’ published work on our Fellowship Stories page.
The new Fall 2024 McGraw Fellows are:
Stan Alcorn and Tomás Uprimny
Alcorn is a freelance American journalist based in Colombia. Uprimny is an independent Colombian journalist. Together they will report on “biodiversity credits” and financing conservation in the Amazon.
Alcorn was previously an investigative reporter and producer at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, where his stories helped motivate changes in law and were taught in university classrooms. They have won numerous honors including a Peabody Award, an NABJ Salute to Excellence Award, a Best of the West Award, multiple Online Journalism Awards and Society for Professional Journalists awards. He was also a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
Uprimny was most recently the lead producer of the podcast series DMG: El Sueño de la Hormiga, about the largest financial pyramid scheme in the history of Colombia. It was the most-listened-to podcast in Colombia for several weeks and won the award for best podcast from the Círculo de Periodistas de Bogotá. It also won the most prestigious journalism award in Colombia, the Simón Bolívar Prize — an award Uprimny has won five times, for written and radio journalism.
Jonathan Mingle
@jonmingle/@jmingle.bsky.social
An independent journalist based in Vermont, Mingle will report on electric utilities’ lobbying and legal challenges to federal limits on power plant pollution. Mingle’s climate – and energy-focused journalism has appeared in a range of outlets, including The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Yale Environment 360 and Undark Magazine. A former Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism and recipient of the Alicia Patterson Foundation Fellowship, Mingle is the author of Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2015, and Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Fight for America’s Energy Future, published this year by Island Press.
Meghan Sullivan
A freelance investigative journalist based between Alaska and Washington D.C., Sullivan will report on fraud schemes that target tribal corporations.
A recipient of the Scripps Howard Fellowship, Sullivan worked on video investigations as a reporter, producer, and on-air correspondent for the Scripps News National Investigative Unit. Prior to that, she was a National Reporter for Indian Country Today, where she led a year-long series in partnership with the Solutions Journalism Network focused on the long-term impacts of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act — a complex law which established the state’s unique economic system and land policy. The series won numerous awards from the Native American Journalists Association, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards and the Alaska Press Club Awards, among others. Meghan started her career in journalism as a reporting fellow for the NBC News Business and Technology Unit and the NBC News Bay Area Investigative Unit.
Molly Taft
A freelance investigative environment and climate journalist, Taft will explore the use of chemicals in the semiconductor manufacturing industry in the U.S.
Taft is a contributing reporter and editor at Drilled, a global multimedia reporting project focused on climate accountability. Formerly a staff writer for Earther and a contributing editor for the New Republic, their work has appeared in publications including WIRED, The Nation, The Intercept, Rolling Stone, and Buzzfeed. Taft’s reporting for Earther won a SEAL Environmental Journalism award, and they were part of a reporting project produced by the Center for Public Integrity on the health toll climate change is taking on the country that won an Association of Health Care Journalists award.
The McGraw Fellows – Spring 2024
Gregory Barber
@GregoryJBarber / @GregBarber.bsky.social
An independent journalist based in San Francisco, Barber will report on the role of South
American eucalyptus plantations in US corporate climate strategies and their local impacts.
He reports on technology and the environment, with particular a focus on tradeoffs between
climate solutions and biodiversity. His reporting on the ecological consequences of mining for
clean energy materials won the Walter Sullivan Award for Science Journalism and the Society of
Professional Journalists NorCal’s longform writing award. He was previously an 11th Hour Fellow at UC Berkeley School of Journalism and a staff writer for WIRED, where his beats over the years included AI, a global pandemic, and climate tech.
Robert J. Lopez
Lopez, a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, will focus on the inadequate regulation of working conditions in California’s multibillion-dollar agricultural industry.
Lopez was an investigative journalist at the Los Angeles Times, where he was part of a team awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for uncovering corruption in Bell, a small city near Los Angeles. He and several Times colleagues were Pulitzer Prize finalists in 2023 for investigations detailing corruption, criminality and worker exploitation in California’s legal cannabis industry. During his reporting career, he has covered issues involving crime, corruption and immigration in Central America and Mexico and across the U.S. He is a graduate of the University of Hawaii.
Nora Mabie
A Montana-based journalist, Mabie will use her Fellowship to investigate the housing crisis in Indian Country throughout the state.
Mabie covers Indigenous communities for five Lee Enterprises newspapers in Montana – the
Billings Gazette, Missoulian, Helena Independent Record, Montana Standard and Ravalli
Republic. She has won grants from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and from
the American Press Institute to support long-form projects on health equity and voter
engagement in tribal communities. As part of the Indigenous communities beat she has built at two Montana news entities, she regularly crafts and circulates engagement tools, including
surveys, social media callouts and polls to reach diverse sources, build new relationships and
enhance trust. She’s also hosted several listening sessions on reservations to further engage
community members in her work. Nora earned a master’s degree in social justice journalism at
Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
Josh McGhee
An investigative reporter for MindSite News, the only national outlet solely focused on mental health issues, McGhee will explore how hospitals are profiting from involuntary mental health treatment laws.
Based in Chicago, McGhee joined Mindsite News in June 2022 to cover the intersection of mental health and criminal justice. During his tenure there, McGhee’s work has won a Peter Lisagor Award for Best Reporting on Crime and Justice, a Studs Terkel Award, a Stillwater Award for Best Collaboration, and a Digital Health Award for his reporting on the Baker Act usage against children.
