McGraw Center gives fellowships to four journalists

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 labor conditions in California’s agriculture sector and the housing crisis in Montana’s Indian Country, to the impact of efforts by US corporations to become carbon neutral.

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 deeply-reported investigative or enterprise stories on critical issues related to the US and global economies, finance and business. More than 75 journalists have since won McGraw Fellowships.

The new McGraw Fellows for Spring 2024 are: 

• Gregory Barber: An independent journalist based in San Francisco, Barber will report on the role of South American eucalyptus plantations in US corporate climate strategies and their local impacts.Barber reports on technology and the environment, with a particular focus on the tradeoffs between climate solutions and biodiversity. His reporting on the ecological consequences of mining for clean energy materials won the Walter Sullivan Award for Science Journalism and the SPJ NorCal’s longform writing award. He was previously an 11th Hour Fellow at UC Berkeley School of Journalism and a staff writer for WIRED, where his beats over the years included AI, a global pandemic, and climate tech.

• Robert J. Lopez: A freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, Lopez will focus on the inadequate regulation of working conditions in California’s multibillion-dollar agricultural industry.Lopez was an investigative journalist at the Los Angeles Times, where he was part of a team awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for uncovering corruption in Bell, a small city near Los Angeles. He and several Times colleagues were Pulitzer Prize finalists in 2023 for investigations detailing corruption, criminality and worker exploitation in California’s legal cannabis industry. During his reporting career, he has covered issues involving crime, corruption and immigration in Central America and Mexico and across the U.S.

• Josh McGhee: An investigative reporter for MindSite News, the only national outlet solely focused on mental health issues, McGhee will explore how hospitals are profiting from involuntary mental health treatment laws.Based in Chicago, McGhee joined Mindsite News in June 2022 to cover the intersection of mental health and criminal justice. During his tenure there, McGhee’s work has won a Peter Lisagor Award for Best Reporting on Crime and Justice, a Studs Terkel Award, a Stillwater Award for Best Collaboration, and a Digital Health Award for his reporting on the Baker Act usage against children.

•  Nora Mabie: A Montana-based journalist, Nora Mabie will use her Fellowship to investigate the housing crisis in Indian Country throughout the state.Mabie covers Indigenous communities for five Lee Enterprises newspapers in Montana – the Billings Gazette, Missoulian, Helena Independent Record, Montana Standard and Ravalli Republic. She has won grants from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and from the American Press Institute to support long-form projects on health equity and voter engagement in tribal communities. As part of the Indigenous communities beat she has built at two Montana news entities, she regularly crafts and circulates engagement tools, including surveys, social media callouts and polls to reach diverse sources, build new relationships and enhance trust. She’s also hosted several listening sessions on reservations to further engage community members in her work.

More than 130 journalists working across a 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.