Consumer Reports hires Kravitz as deputy editor

Joel Keehn, director of content for special projects at Consumer Reports, sent out the following on Tuesday:

Please join me in welcoming Derek Kravitz to CR!

He joins the Special Projects team as our new reporter and writer covering the Digital Marketplace, including how AI is and will be affecting consumers. He will be working closely with Delicia Hand and her team as we delve into this ever-more important area for CR and the world.

He arrives with an impressive background: He’s worked at the Washington Post, the AP, the Wall Street Journal, and ProPublica. Along the way, he’s been a member of three Pulitzer finalist teams, two at ProPublica (for Public Service and  Explanatory Reporting), and one at the Washington Post (for Breaking News).

He was a “Magic Grant” fellow at the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, where he led a team of six journalists for the Documenting COVID-19 project, including Missing Them, published by The City.

He comes to us from Muck Rock, a public-records and accountability journalism website that partners with newsrooms across the country, where he has worked on projects related to death certificate errors that led to the undercount of COVID-19 deaths and the mishandling of nuclear waste.

As if that’s not enough, he teaches investigative journalism at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, with a focus on public-records and computer-assisted reporting, and advising students on their Master’s projects.

Wish he had been there when I was a student way back when! At the very least, I plan to take full advantage of all he has to offer now, and I’m sure he’ll be eager to share his experience and expertise with us all!