Mara Shalhoup is ProPublica’s South editor. She was previously deputy editor of Atlanta magazine, where she guided investigations that explored the Atlanta Police Department’s flawed disciplinary practices and revealed how state epidemiologists were sidelined from the creation and management of Georgia’s maligned COVID-19 dashboard.

Prior to Atlanta magazine, Shalhoup served as editor in chief of LA Weekly, Chicago Reader and the Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing. Her earlier work as a writer at Creative Loafing, including the examination of the mass displacement of families from public housing and the saga of a teenage sex worker who murdered three men, earned her two Livingston Award nominations, an SPJ Green Eyeshade Award for investigative reporting, a Clarion Award for feature writing and recognition from the Atlanta Press Club as Journalist of the Year. She is the author of “BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family,” which reveals how one of the largest cocaine enterprises in U.S. history helped fuel the rise of some of Atlanta’s biggest hip-hop acts.