YSU, NewsOutlet partner with leading investigative reporting group in US

YSU, NewsOutlet partner with leading investigative reporting group in US

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

Youngstown State University and ProPublica, the nation’s leading investigative reporting organization, will be piloting a project where journalism students work on investigative stories under the guidance of ProPublica editors.

Stephen Engelberg, managing editor of ProPublica, will be working with YSU Journalism faculty members Tim Francisco and Alyssa Lenhoff to give students enrolled in the Advanced Reporting course in the fall semester an opportunity to report and produce important investigative stories.

Engelberg will visit campus at the beginning of the project and then will be joining the class each week via Skype. He will talk with students about a wide range of journalistic issues, from finding stories to uncovering information and conducting interviews. Engelberg, who has been with ProPublica since its inception four years ago, is the former managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland. He also worked at The New York Times, where he founded that newspaper’s investigative team and has won numerous national awards for his work.

The pilot project with YSU is part of the university’s growing NewsOutlet operation and expanded emphasis on its journalism major. Earlier in the year, YSU President Cynthia E. Anderson named the journalism major, “The Anderson Program in Journalism,” to honor her late parents.

The NewsOutlet, launched at YSU, is a joint venture among several other universities and professional media organizations. The Vindicator and WYSU were its two founding media partners.

Under Vindicator leadership, TheNewsOutlet won first place in the Ohio Associated Press competition for investigative reporting for a project which appeared in The Vindicator and that documented questionable dealings of a powerful church in the city.