ProPublica has selected four new partner newsrooms and local journalists for its Local Reporting Network. This is the fifth group selected as part of the organization’s 50 State Initiative, a commitment to selecting a partnership with one newsroom from each state by 2028.
The reporters are Katie Shepherd of the Baltimore Banner, Jeremy Margolis of the Concord Monitor, Jon Mingle of Seven Days, and Ashley Balcerzak and Jean Rimbach of The Record/NorthJersey.com. They will begin their investigative collaborations on July 1.
“We are excited to welcome four new newsrooms into the Local Reporting Network,” said Sarah Blustain, ProPublica’s assistant managing editor for local. “These are extraordinary journalists, and we can’t wait to get started.”
Katie Shepherd — Baltimore Banner (Maryland)
Shepherd is an investigative reporter covering politics, government and health in Maryland and the Washington, D.C., region. Her investigations have exposed lax regulation of funeral homes and predatory tourism agencies, spurring criminal investigations and regulatory reform. Her work as a 2023 USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism national fellow unearthed sharp increases in medical mistakes at Maryland hospitals and brought to light ethical and clinical missteps by the top pathologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Before moving to D.C., she chronicled the rise of right-wing extremist groups in the Pacific Northwest and covered criminal justice in Oregon. Her work has been recognized by the Society for Professional Journalists, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the Virginia Press Association. Shepherd previously worked for The Washington Post and Willamette Week.
Jeremy Margolis — Concord Monitor (New Hampshire)
Margolis is a reporter at the Concord Monitor, where he’s spent the past two years primarily covering education. His reporting on the University of New Hampshire’s response to a pro-Palestine protest cast doubt on statements made by university police to justify assault charges against students. His analysis of financial data from the state’s school voucher program uncovered questionable spending practices that lawmakers have relied upon to advocate for increased restrictions. He has also investigated a Florida businessman who owns a local charter school, an 1859 law that disenfranchises some residents and a school’s decision to remove a popular novel from its required curriculum following a parent’s complaint. Margolis was named the Rookie of the Year by the New Hampshire Press Association in 2024, and his reporting on the University of New Hampshire was selected as its investigative series of the year. Before joining the Concord Monitor, Margolis contributed to his hometown Brookline.News in Massachusetts, and worked at a law firm in New York and at a research lab at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Jon Mingle — Seven Days (Vermont)
Mingle is an independent journalist based in Vermont. He has written about climate change, energy, health and environmental issues for The New York Times, Yale Environment 360, Seven Days, Undark Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Slate, MIT Technology Review and other outlets. Mingle has investigated how regulators have ignored the health threat posed by gas appliances for decades, and how federal officials and energy executives downplayed the risks of building a major fossil gas pipeline project across landslide-prone terrain in Appalachia. He reported on the impacts of industrialized agriculture on Brazil’s savannah ecosystem as a Middlebury fellow in Environmental Journalism and spent a year reporting on political, regulatory and grassroots fights over new natural gas infrastructure as an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow. His reporting has earned awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the American Meteorological Society and the New England Newspaper & Press Association. He is the author of two books on energy, air pollution and climate: “Fire and Ice: Soot, Solidarity, and Survival on the Roof of the World” and “Gaslight: The Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Fight for America’s Energy Future.”
John Dillon, who will work with Mingle as a consulting editor, is a veteran print and broadcast journalist specializing in energy, environmental and agriculture issues. His investigative reporting has won multiple Edward R. Murrow Awards. From 2001 to 2021, Dillon served as senior reporter and news director at Vermont Public Radio, producing stories for the local station as well as for NPR.
Ashley Balcerzak and Jean Rimbach — The Record/NorthJersey.com (New Jersey)
Balcerzak is an investigative reporter at The Record, where she has covered housing andhomelessness, the state legislature, racial profiling in policing and crumbling school infrastructure, among other subjects in New Jersey. Following Balcerzak’s series on the personal finances, contracts and tax returns of state lawmakers, the governor announced a package of ethics reform bills. Balcerzak previously covered political influence at the Center for Public Integrity and OpenSecrets.
Rimbach is a senior investigative reporter at The Record, where her work has explored a broad range of topics, from misspending in public preschools to lavish spending in high school and college sports. Rimbach has written in depth on charter schools and the financial challenges facing private colleges, revealed how a sexually abusive doctor avoided jail and kept his license and exposed the shaky financial past of the Egyptian national at the center of the corruption case against former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez.
Balcerzak and Rimbach’s recent series “Hidden at Home” revealed failures in the group home system for adults with developmental disabilities and led to the passage of legislation enacting the first-ever fines against group home companies.Their reporting earned state and national honors, including an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, a SABEW Best in Business Award and the President’s Choice Award from the Silurians Press Club.
ProPublica launched the Local Reporting Network at the beginning of 2018 to boost investigative journalism in local newsrooms. It has since worked with more than 95 news organizations. The network is part of ProPublica’s local initiative, which includes offices in the Midwest, Northwest, South and Southwest, plus an investigative unit in partnership with The Texas Tribune.
