Lee Enterprises, co-owner of the Arizona Daily Star, is shining an investigative reporting spotlight across its 77 daily news markets throughout the country.
The company has formed a 12-member Public Service Journalism team, which includes veteran reporters who will work it teams serving Lee's West, East and Midwest news regions.
The investigative reporting roles are new positions intended to drive public accountability journalism throughout Lee’s local news markets, including Tucson.
“The creation of our Public Service Journalism team strengthens our company’s commitment to investigative and data journalism, because it’s the work that can truly make a difference in the communities we serve,” said Jason Adrians, Lee Enterprises’ vice president-local news. “At Lee Enterprises, we’re investing in local news talent and tools, premium reporting and storytelling, and the development of young journalists.”
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Lee’s new Public Service Journalism team members bring expertise in various topical backgrounds, including public safety, public health, government, social justice and the environment.
The regional Public Service Journalism teams will assist reporters in local markets get access to public records, track taxpayer money and government spending, examine data related to health, crime and safety issues, and serve as watchdogs for communities across the country. In their previous reporting roles both inside Lee newsrooms and in other news markets, journalists on the new team have helped free the innocent, put the guilty behind bars and change laws.
The teams include a Pulitzer Prize finalist; three members of the nationally renowned ProPublica Local Reporting Network; a grant recipient from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting; a regional Edward R. Murrow Regional Award winner; top national award recipients from Investigative Reporters and Editors and the national Society of Professional Journalists; and a data journalism specialist and former reporter and researcher for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Better Government Association in Chicago.
This new 12-member Lee Enterprises reporting team will shine an investigative reporting spotlight on important community issues throughout the country.
Work by these teams has already begun, with in-depth reporting on leading causes of death throughout more than a dozen Lee markets publishing in recent weeks and a recently published investigation, in partnership with ProPublica, on a systemic pattern of abuse and mistreatment of mental health patients in a state-run facility in Illinois.
Lee Enterprises owns the Star in partnership with Gannett.
