ProPublica announced the hiring of journalist and author Abe Streep as a reporter for the newsroom’s unit in the Southwest.
Streep joins the organization after a long and successful stint as a freelance writer. In 2024, ProPublica published an investigation by Streep into the federal government’s alarming neglect of its wildland firefighters at the exact moment climate change has made their jobs more demanding and dangerous. He chronicled how low pay and threats to their health has set off an exodus that’s putting communities at risk.
Streep has also reported on the impact of nuclear weapons production in New Mexico for The New Yorker and Scientific American; the death of local newspapers in Colorado for The New York Times Magazine and the Columbia Journalism Review; Syrian refugees’ experience settling in Montana for Harper’s Magazine; Utah lawmakers' push sell off public lands for Outside; and the aftermath of the recent L.A. wildfires for New York Magazine.
Streep has been a contributing editor at Outside and contributing writer at The California Sunday Magazine and is the author of “Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana,” in which he chronicles a high school basketball team’s historic seasons and life in their community. In 2021, “Brothers on Three” won the Montana Book Award and New Mexico-Arizona General Nonfiction Book Award. When Streep was awarded the American Mosaic Journalism Prize in 2019, the judges praised his reporting as bursting “with compassion and urgency as he lifts up stories of often-overlooked communities in the American West.”
“Abe’s extensive experience reporting in the Southwest will be critical to furthering our work in the region,” ProPublica Southwest Editor Michael Squires said. “We’re thrilled to have him dig deep into important issues and hold the powerful to account.”
“I’m honored to join ProPublica at a crucial moment in the history of the American Southwest,” Streep said. “ProPublica’s work here is vitally important and I can’t wait to get started.”
