Center for Cooperative Media launches 2025 Investigative Reporting Initiative
The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University is proud to announce the launch of the 2025 NJ News Commons Investigative Reporting Initiative, a new journalism training program for New Jersey-based newsrooms.
Through this initiative, made possible thanks to support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, we aim to nurture a new wave of investigative storytellers who are committed to holding power to account and surfacing issues that matter deeply to New Jersey communities.
The Center convened a selection committee to review program submissions and select the final cohort. This group was comprised of incoming coaches, educators, and local journalists, including:
- Independent journalist, author, and filmmaker Reniqua Allen-Lamphere
- Temple University journalism professor and multimedia journalist Yvonne Latty
- Prabha Natarajan, Editor-in-Chief of Law360 Pulse and board member with Pro News Coaches
- Sean P. Sullivan, senior reporter at NJ.com
Eight newsrooms were selected to join the inaugural cohort. Each will be represented by up to two staff members or contributors who will participate in the program, which includes:
- Trainings hosted by Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE).
- Access to a program coach who will help guide reporting and story development over the course of the program.
- A reporting stipend of $3,000 per newsroom to support the time, research, and production costs toward the completion of an investigative story.
- Complimentary one-year IRE membership for newsroom representatives.
The workshops began on Friday, September 19, with a virtual introductory session hosted by Laura Moscoso, journalist and training director for IRE & the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR).
👏 Meet the 2025 investigative reporting cohort
Over the next six months, the newsrooms listed below will report on a range of investigative stories focused on themes including education, fiscal responsibility in NJ schools, immigration enforcement, and access to healthcare.
The Jersey Bee
The Jersey Bee is a nonprofit, public service news provider that “works with the people we serve to produce news and reporting that meets local information needs, inspires civic participation, and improves the quality of life in our community. The Jersey Bee was launched in April 2020 as The Bloomfield Information Project to respond to an acute need for quality local news and information amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Montclair Local
Montclair Local Nonprofit News is an independent local news organization founded in 2017 with the mission to “spark dialogue, objectively inform and build community in Montclair.” The mission of the Montclair Local is to strengthen its hometown “through independent, in-depth, factual reporting on the issues and events that affect you: your tax dollars, your schools, your elected officials, the institutions and businesses that serve you, and the restaurants and cultural events that enrich your life.”
New Jersey Hispano
New Jersey Hispano is “a Spanish-language newspaper dedicated to informing the entire Latino community in the Garden State.” It provides local, national, and international news coverage with a focus on issues relevant to Spanish-speaking residents.
New Jersey Urban News
New Jersey Urban News is “dedicated to covering New Jersey’s vibrant African American community through informative stories and thorough coverage. Founded in 2018, NJ Urban News covers “stories often overlooked by mainstream media, impacting the 1.5 million people who make up New Jersey’s Black and Brown community.”
New Jersey Monitor
New Jersey Monitor provides “fair and tough reporting on the issues affecting New Jersey, from political corruption to education to criminal and social justice. We strive to hold powerful people accountable and explain how their actions affect New Jerseyans from Montague to Cape May.”
Public Square Amplified
Public Square Amplified (PSA) is an “award-winning grassroots local nonprofit newsroom headquartered in Newark, New Jersey.” PSA “positions journalism to deconstruct our shared racialized space and the power of construct and context in curating and consuming news. Our reporting centers on democracy, social and economic justice, racial equality, and the immigrant experience rooted in community.”
Slice of Culture
Slice of Culture is a digital publication that focuses on covering underrepresented stories, especially in Hudson County’s BIPOC communities. SOC “dives deep into the vibrant tapestry of local businesses, cultural happenings, and community stories which we share through multimedia storytelling.”
The Trenton Journal
The Trenton Journal is “an independently owned and operated multimedia platform that aims to address the information gaps and amplify voices in New Jersey’s capital city through solutions-based journalism.” Its mission is “to provide the people of Trenton with accurate, independent, and meaningful journalism that informs, empowers, and uplifts our community.”
👏 Meet the investigative reporting coaches
In the coming months, these newsrooms will work with an assigned program coach who will provide feedback and help navigate any challenges as they report on their stories. We’re honored to partner with this acclaimed group of veteran journalists, each bringing years of experience and a deep commitment to mentoring and supporting local news.
Reniqua Allen-Lamphere
Reniqua is a journalist, author, and filmmaker who tells stories at the intersection of race, culture, health, and history. She is the founder of Oshun Griot, a wellness app supporting people of color navigating infertility. She is currently the director and producer of Infertile Ground, a feature-length documentary about Black families, fertility, and the climate crisis. Allen-Lamphere is also writing Fertility Noir (Ballantine Books/Penguin Random House), inspired by her own journey with IVF, endometriosis, and fibroids. It tackles the myths around Black fertility and offers honest, expert-backed advice for navigating a system that too often overlooks Black families. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Esquire. She has contributed to film, radio, and television projects for PBS, MSNBC, WNYC, and Apple TV+. Her third book, Black Dreams (Columbia University Press), a cultural history of the American Dream through the lens of Black popular culture, is forthcoming. Allen-Lamphere will be the coach for New Jersey Urban News.
Evelyn Larrubia
Evelyn is the business and technology investigations editor at The Washington Post. She’s been an investigative journalist for three decades, reporting and editing stories that have led to indictments and changes in laws. Larrubia has been honored with more than a dozen national journalism awards, including the Scripps Howard, the Livingston, the Murrow, and the Loeb. She’s the former Managing Editor of Investigations for The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that focused on using data to investigate big tech; former Executive Editor of public radio’s Marketplace; former Acting Senior Vice President for News and Investigations at Southern California Public Radio, and a former investigative reporter at The Los Angeles Times.” Larrubia will be the coach for New Jersey Hispano.
Yvonne Latty
Yvonne is a professor at Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication and the Director of the Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting. The Center specializes in multimedia community-based investigative journalism grounded in empathy and focused on solutions. The center’s work has received dozens of local, regional, and national awards, including three Edward R. Murrow Awards. Latty began her career in newspapers and is the author of two books highlighting veterans’ stories. She has also produced award-winning documentaries and podcasts. Before joining Temple, she was a journalism professor and multimedia graduate director at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Latty will be the coach for New Jersey Monitor and Slice of Culture.
Rachel L. Swarns
Rachel is a journalist, author, and associate professor of journalism at New York University, who writes about race and history as a contributing writer for The New York Times. Her articles about Georgetown University’s roots in slavery touched off a national conversation about American universities and their ties to this painful period of history. Her work has been recognized and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, among others. At the Times, Swarns served as a full-time reporter and correspondent for 22 years.
She has reported from Russia, Cuba, Guatemala, and southern Africa, where she served as the Times’ Johannesburg bureau chief. She also served as a Metro columnist in New York City. In 2018, she joined NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, where she focuses on American slavery and its legacies. At the Institute, she serves as the director of a new research initiative, “Hidden Legacies: Slavery, Race and the Making of 21st Century America,’’ which seeks to deepen Americans’ understanding of the connections between slavery and contemporary institutions. Swarns will be the coach for Public Square Amplified.
The Center recently partnered with Pro News Coaches to offer pro bono editing support for qualifying New Jersey news organizations. Pro News Coaches is a team of former Wall Street Journal editors and reporters who provide coaching, investigative project assistance, and editing support to local outlets. We’re pleased that two Pro News Coaches will also work with NJ newsrooms as part of this cohort.
Greg Stricharchuk
Greg was a journalist for more than 40 years, roughly evenly split between reporting and editing at nine publications. He mostly wrote about corporate crime at the Wall Street Journal, where he was nominated for a Pulitzer for stories about corruption involving generic drugs. Most recently, in 2019, he won a Fulbright to Ukraine, where he and his wife lived for about two years. He researched the deportation of people from the Carpathian mountain region of what had been Austria-Hungary to Ukraine after finding his mother’s relatives in that country. He also found his father’s family in Belarus. He and his wife live in Virginia. Stricharchuk will be the coach for The Trenton Journal.
Chris Winans
Chris spent 22 years as a reporter and editor, including 10 years at The Wall Street Journal. Before the Journal, Chris covered crime, politics, and local government for daily newspapers and UPI in and around Philadelphia. His last position before the Journal was community news editor at the Delaware County (Pa.) Daily Times coordinating coverage of 49 municipalities. Typical of the projects he worked on was a deep dive on a Chester, Pa., bond issue to pay off an older bond issue in danger of default. After the Journal, he edited the news publications at AM Best Co., the insurance rating agency, then spent five years as a financial analyst on Wall Street covering insurers. For the past 11 years, he has been a communications consultant. Winans will be the coach for Montclair Local.
The Center recognizes investigative journalism as a vital public service, and believes more people should have the tools and support to pursue it.
Beginning with this first cohort, the goal is to help small and nonprofit outlets access the resources and affordable media liability insurance, an essential safeguard for investigative work.
We’ll check in over the next few months to share updates and stories as the newsrooms continue their reporting.
Cassandra Etienne is the associate director of membership and programming at the Center for Cooperative Media. Contact her at etiennec@montclair.edu.
About the Center for Cooperative Media: The Center is a primarily grant-funded program of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Its mission is to grow and strengthen local journalism and support an informed society in New Jersey and beyond. The Center is supported with funding from Montclair State University, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, the Independence Public Media Foundation, Rita Allen Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. For more information, visit centerforcooperativemedia.org.
