ProPublica reporter Silverman departs

ProPublica investigative reporter Craig Silverman has left the news organization after nearly four years.

He has been focused on platforms, disinformation, cyberfraud and other forms of online manipulation. His work earned two SABEW Best in Business Awards.

Silverman previously worked at BuzzFeed News, where he held the title of media editor and produced a string of major investigative stories about misinformation, fake news and the unfettered power of social media networks.

He was awarded a spot on the Politico 50 in 2017 for being a fake news watchdog, and he received the 2018 Carey McWilliams Award from the American Political Science Association, which honors “a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.”

Before that, Silverman founded Emergent.info, a rumor tracking project developed as part of a research fellowship with the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. His research resulted in the publication of “Lies, Damn Lies, and Viral Content: How News Websites Spread (and Debunk) Online Rumors, Unverified Claims and Misinformation.”

From 2004 to 2015, Silverman wrote “Regret The Error,” a blog about media accuracy and corrections, which became part of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and was the basis for an award-winning book of the same name. He is also the former managing editor of PBS MediaShift.