Four 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 environmental risks posed by the disposal of oilfield wastewater and how the mass deportation of immigrants is impacting the US economy, to an examination of the online platforms that promise to teach young men strategies for financial success.
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 in-depth stories that “Follow the Money.” The Fellowships enable experienced journalists to produce ambitious investigative or enterprise stories on critical issues related to the global economy, finance and business. Roughly 100 journalists have since won McGraw Fellowships.
The new Summer 2026 McGraw Fellows are:
- Nick Bowlin: A freelance environmental and energy journalist, Bowlin will investigate pollution from oilfield wastewater disposal during the Fellowship.For the past year, Bowlin has been covering oil and gas in Oklahoma for ProPublica and The Frontier, as part of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Prior to this role, he was a contributing writer and editor for High Country News, based in a small town on Colorado’s Western Slope. Bowlin’s freelance work has appeared in Harper’s, The Guardian, ProPublica, The Drift, The Nation, Vox and Politico Magazine, among others. His story about the battery metals mining boom for The Drift was selected for the 2024 The Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. He is a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award.
- Robert Chaney: A senior writer with the Montana-based Mountain Journal, Robert Chaney will use the Fellowship to report on efforts to transform wildfire suppression technology as wildland firefighting undergoes major policy changes in the United States.Chaney has covered the Rocky Mountain West from his home in Missoula, Montana for almost four decades. He is a Nieman Science Journalism Fellow at Harvard University, and received an Alicia Patterson Foundation fellowship for work on climate change in Glacier National Park. His first book, The Grizzly in the Driveway, was published by University of Washington Press and honored in the 2020 Society of Environmental Journalists Rachel Carson Book Awards.
- Luc Olinga: An independent journalist based in New York, Olinga will examine the business models and corporate structures behind online platforms that market financial success to young men.Olinga is an award-winning journalist with 25 years’ experience covering business, technology and finance, including a decade as a U.S. Correspondent and Editor for Agence France-Presse in New York and Washington, D.C. and senior editorial roles at TheStreet and Gizmodo. He writes The Manosphere, a newsletter examining the forces reshaping the lives of boys and young men, and his work has appeared in The Boston Globe, among other outlets. Born in Yaoundé, Cameroon, he began his career in France before moving to the United States.
- Rong Xiaoqing: A New York-based journalist, Xiaoqing’s Fellowship project will focus on how the mass deportations of immigrants is impacting the US economy and its labor markets.Xiaoqing has covered the Chinese diaspora community in the U.S for more than two decades. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, New York, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and Wired among other outlets. She has won multiple awards, including from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Ethics and Journalism Initiative at New York University, New America Media and the Center for Community Media at the Newmark Graduate J-School. She was an Alicia Patterson fellow, and a recipient of grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Fund for Investigative Journalism, and USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism.
Close to 140 journalists working across a wide array of subjects applied for the latest round of the 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.
