ProPublica hires Swearingen to run business investigations team

Jake Swearingen has been hired as a senior editor to lead a new team investigating the business world.

“I’m excited to welcome Jake’s combination of rigor, imagination and verve as we form a team to go after the abuses of the wealthiest and most powerful people and companies,” assistant managing editor Jesse Eisinger said in a statement.

Swearingen was most recently executive editor of enterprise at Business Insider, where he oversaw investigative reporting. He edited “The True Cost of Data Centers,” which produced the most comprehensive national database of more than 1,200 data centers and won a George Polk Award. “Warehouse Nation,” an 11-part series on how the e-commerce boom reshaped communities and fueled a workplace injury crisis, won a SABEW Best in Business Award. An investigation he edited into C-section rates at for-profit hospitals is a National Magazine Award finalist, and his team’s reporting on celebrity misuse of COVID-19 relief funds prompted congressional scrutiny.

Previously, Swearingen was an editor and reporter at New York Magazine, The Atlantic, Consumer Reports, Popular Mechanics and Modern Farmer. His humor writing has appeared in McSweeney’s and was anthologized in “Best American Nonrequired Reading.”

“Business has never been more powerful or less accountable,” Swearingen said in a statement. “ProPublica sets the standard for high-impact journalism, and I’m excited to build a d