New Mexico In Depth has been selected to join a high-impact national network focused on local investigative reporting in 2020.
Since 2008, ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom headquartered in New York City, has become known for rigorous and thoughtful journalism, winning five Pulitzers, five Peabody Awards, three Emmy Awards, seven George Polk Awards and five Online News Association Awards for general excellence.
The New York based news organization will fund and lend its expertise to a year-long investigative reporting project by Albuquerque-based reporter Bryant Furlow focused on health care in New Mexico.
Bryant Furlow is known for reporting that leads to change.
His reporting has exposed off-label sedation of jail inmates with prescription drug cocktails, embezzlements, and lax oversight by the state’s insurance regulators — reporting that prompted new state legislation on insurance rate-setting transparency. With New Mexico In Depth, he detailed how the state’s freeze on Medicaid payments to the state’s largest behavioral health providers disrupted drug treatment and mental health services for children and adults across the state. He’s authored hundreds of health care and medical research news stories for medical journals, including The Lancet journals’ news desks, where his recent reporting has spotlighted neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome, vaping injuries, the seizure by the US Border Patrol of children’s medications and volunteer health care efforts at migrant shelters along the U.S./Mexico border.
The ProPublica Local Reporting Network was launched in 2018, and with the addition of New Mexico In Depth and 12 other news organizations around the country, now numbers 20 projects. In addition to funding a full-time investigative reporter for one year, ProPublica senior editors will collaborate with Furlow, and the organization will lend their expertise with data, research, and community engagement.
New Mexico In Depth regularly seeks to collaborate with both national and local news organizations to bring resources, new skills, and more journalism to New Mexico communities, where investigative reporting is in short supply. In addition to Furlow, NM In Depth will welcome a Report for America journalist in 2020 as well as a post-graduate reporting fellow through a grant from the University of New Mexico School of Journalism.