Eight 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 fraud and money-laundering in the crypto market, to the impact of increased private equity ownership of both childcare facilities and manufactured home parks, and how local governments are spending billions in opioid settlement funds.
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. Nearly 90 journalists have since won McGraw Fellowships.
The new Summer 2025 McGraw Fellows are:
- Dillon Bergin: a data reporter for MuckRock, where he works on collaborative investigations, Bergin will use the Fellowship to track how local governments in West Virginia are spending a $1 billion payout from opioid settlement money. He’ll later work with reporters in other Appalachian states to help them follow settlement spending too.
Bergin is the director of the Data Liberation Project and hosts FOIAFriday, a monthly community podcast about all things public records. He was a member of the Documenting COVID-19 team, a project funded by MuckRock and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Before that, he was a Report for America corps member with Searchlight New Mexico and a Fulbright Germany Journalism Fellow.
- Bryce Covert: A freelance economic journalist, Covert will report on private equity ownership of childcare facilities during her Fellowship.
Covert is a contributing writer at The Nation, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic and Time Magazine, among others. She is a 2025 National Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, and was a Reporter in Residence at the Omidyar Network in 2023. She won a 2016 Exceptional Merit in Media Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus and the John Swett Merit Certificate from the California Teachers Association in both 2019 and 2022.
- Tamia Fowlkes & Caitlin Looby: Fowlkes is a Public Investigator and multimedia journalist and Looby covers the Great Lakes — both with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Together, they will report on health impacts to workers helping to clean up a Wisconsin Superfund site.
Fowlkes explores disability, labor, politics and culture with a focus on addressing wrongdoing and seeking accountability. Before joining the Journal Sentinel, she completed internships at the Washington Post, the Rachel Maddow Show, USA Today – Network and the Wisconsin State Journal. While working as an intern for the Journal Sentinel’s Investigative Watchdog Team, she was part of the team that produced the “Wires and Fires” series, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Public Service.
Looby is a scientist-turned-journalist whose work has earned numerous honors, including awards from the National Headliner Awards, the Society for Features Journalism and the Milwaukee Press Club. In 2023, she gave a TEDx talk on rebuilding public trust in science. Prior to the Journal Sentinel, Looby worked as a freelance science writer. She also taught science communication, developed workshops, and trained scientists on how to effectively engage with the public.
- Yana Kunichoff: A Tucson-based journalist for Arizona Luminaria, Kunichoff will use her Fellowship to investigate the impact of private equity and corporate ownership on manufactured home parks, a key form of affordable housing in southern Arizona.
Kunichoff joined Arizona Luminaria as a Report For America corps member in 2024. Previously, she covered education for The Arizona Republic and Chalkbeat Chicago, worked as a special projects editor for the Migratory Notes newsletter, produced a feature-length documentary on the experience of elderly prisoners in Illinois jails and oversaw a team of reporters as an editor at The Moscow Times. Her investigation into the Chicago police union’s misinformation about fatal police shootings won a 2016 Sidney Hillman award.
- Nicole Leonard and Alan Yu: Leonard and Yu are health and science reporters at WHYY, an NPR member station in Philadelphia. They will report on the Pennsylvania Rural Health Model, an experiment to see whether a new way to pay for health care could keep rural hospitals afloat and lead to healthier communities.
Leonard is the health reporter for WHYY News. She covers a wide range of issues, from vaccines to public health, drug development and aging. She has also reported stories for NPR, Here & Now, KFF Health News, Connecticut Public Radio and The Press of Atlantic City. She has worked on series investigating food insecurity and domestic violence in New Jersey.
Yu is a reporter for The Pulse, a national science show and podcast from WHYY. He has also reported for NPR, The World, This American Life, and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. He worked on Half Vaxxed, a narrative podcast series from WHYY that was nominated for a Peabody Award.
- Matei Rosca: A freelance journalist who specializes in investigations, economic crime, and international politics, Rosca will investigate money laundering, sanctions violations and fraud in the cryptocurrency industry during his Fellowship.
Rosca owns reporter.london, a new journalism agency aiming to collaborate with established media on exclusive stories. He worked with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on their award-winning “Caspian Cabals” and “Cyprus Confidential” projects, and has written investigations into organized crime, corruption, money laundering, sanctions violations and hostile state influence across the West and Eastern Europe. A former financial services reporter at POLITICO and S&P Global Market Intelligence, he has collaborated with major publications including The Washington Post, OCCRP, Follow the Money, and The Guardian. His financial investigations have led to millions of dollars in fines, recovery and freezing orders in the US and Europe, and his reports have been cited in debates by multiple legislatures.
More than 150 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.
