Five journalists receive McGraw biz journalism grants

Five veteran journalists have been named the latest recipients of the McGraw Fellowship for Business Journalism. Each of the winning projects will receive a grant of up to $15,000.

The new McGraw Fellows will explore subjects ranging from the role of private equity in health care and the future of oil development in Alaska, to the impact of gentrification on the long-standing Haitian-American community in Florida.

The McGraw Fellowships, an initiative of the Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, were created in 2014 to support ambitious coverage of critical issues related to the global economy, finance and business. The Fellowships – awarded twice a year – enable experienced journalists to produce deeply reported investigative or enterprise stories.

The new McGraw Fellows for Summer ’22 are:

• Dieu-Nalio Chery: A freelance Haitian photojournalist now based in New York City, Chery plans to document the gentrification taking place in Florida’s Little Haiti community and the challenges faced by community members working to protect the distinctive culture that has developed there. Through a photo essay with extensive text, he will examine the economic and racial forces that are driving this gentrification.

  Chery began his journalism career in 2004 as a freelance news photographer with local agency Alerte Haiti before joining the Associated Press as a photojournalist in 2010. A finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in breaking news photography, Chery was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club in 2019 for his photos covering the political crisis, violent upheaval, and human rights abuses in Haiti. Chery’s work has also been recognized by Pictures of the Year International, Best of Photojournalism, and the Atlanta Photojournalism seminar. He was a Magnum Foundation Human Rights fellow in 2015. Many of his images have become iconic records of Haiti in the 21st century. He currently works as a freelance photographer for The New York Times, Reuters, and The Associated Press.

• Nithin Coca: An independent Indian-American journalist who splits his time between Tokyo and Oakland, CA, Coca will report on the potential social and environmental impacts of growing demand for high-risk tropical ingredients used in plant-based meat products.

  Coca focuses on longform and investigative reporting on cross-border issues, particularly in Asia. He has done in-depth reporting on climate, environment, and supply chains across the region for outlets including Financial Times, Mongabay, Ensia, Yale E360, China Dialogue, The Nation and Engadget. Coca received his BA in Communication from the University of Southern California, and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University.

• Lois Parshley: A freelance investigative journalist, Parshley will explore the future of American oil and gas development and its regulation in Alaska.

  Parshley’s wide-ranging reporting on science and geopolitics has been published in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, National Geographic, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Wired, among others. She was a finalist in 2022 for the American Society of Magazine Editors’ Public Interest award and has won numerous other awards for her work, including the Mirror Award for excellence in media industry reporting, and the Bricker Award for Science Writing in Medicine for her career-long coverage of health inequities.

• Anita Raghavan: A freelance financial journalist, Raghavan will report on the intersection of private equity and healthcare.

  A former European bureau chief for Forbes whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Information, The Los Angeles Times, HuffPost and CNN.com, Raghavan also spent nearly two decades at The Wall Street Journal, where she won awards from the Overseas Press Club and the New York Press Club for her business reporting. She is the author of a critically-acclaimed book, “The Billionaire’s Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund,” which chronicles the fall of the three-time chairman of consulting firm McKinsey & Co. following charges of insider trading. The book was named one of the “100 Notable Books of 2013” by The New York Times.

• Dan Weissmann: The founder and host of An Arm and a Leg, a popular podcast about the cost of health care produced in partnership with Kaiser Health News, Weissmann will investigate the players behind the wave of lawsuits that hospitals have filed against indigent patients over unpaid bills.

  Prior to creating An Arm and a Leg in 2018, Weissmann was a staff reporter for public radio’s Marketplace and Chicago’s WBEZ. His reporting has appeared on Planet Money, Reveal, 99 Percent Invisible, Code Switch, Latino USA, and NPR’s news shows Morning Edition and All Things Considered.

Roughly 90 journalists working on stories across wide array of subjects applied for the latest round of the McGraw Fellowships. Each winning project receives funding up to $15,000. In addition to financial backing, the McGraw Center provides Fellows with editorial guidance and assistance in placing stories with media outlets.