The McGraw Fellows
2024
Four 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 labor conditions in California’s
agricultural sector and the housing crisis in Montana’s Indian Country, to the impact of efforts
by US corporations to become carbon neutral.
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 ambitious coverage of critical issues related to the global economy, finance and business. The Fellowships – awarded twice a year – enable experienced journalists to produce deeply reported works of investigative or enterprise journalism that “Follows the Money.”
The first McGraw Fellows were named in July 2014; more than 75 journalists have since won
McGraw Fellowships. Roughly 130 journalists working across a wide array of subjects applied
for the latest round of the Fellowships. In addition to financial backing, the McGraw Center
provides Fellows with editorial guidance and assistance in placing their stories with media
outlets.
The winners were selected through a competitive process. The next deadline to apply is Oct. 6,
2024; summer 2025 applications will be due March 31, 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 Summer 2024 McGraw Fellows are:
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.
