Breaking, Enterprise & Investigative Public-Policy & Justice Reporter/Editor/Newsroom Manager | eferk@mac.com

SUMMARY

Award-winning investigative journalist and professor with decades of experience breaking news and telling deeply reported stories with narratives that matter and create change. Chiefly focused on justice and its intersection with politics and money – but have covered the range of public-policy news. Managed multiple teams in newsrooms across the country, coaching and mentoring up-and-coming journalists as a professor and editing seasoned reporters in high-stakes newsrooms.

CORE SKILLS

Breaking, Enterprise & Investigative Reporting | Writing | Editing | Criminal Justice Sourcing | Teaching | FOIA | PACER | LEXIS-NEXIS | Project Management | Team Management | Storytelling & Content Development (Digital, Social, Podcast, Video) | Award-winning professor of journalism | Fluent in in Government, Public Policy Coverage | Sourced across government and communities nationally

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Lee Enterprises

Investigative Reporter | Kansas City, Mo. June 2024 - Present

• Integral member of a national team investigating all aspects of the justice system, producing daily, short-, medium- and long-term investigations, including a long-running probe into a woman’s allegations that her father was a killer of young women – drawing FBI, state and local investigations.
• Partnership with The Associated Press on a series of stories involving legal, environmental, business and political stories, including an investigation into attempts by carbon-capture companies to force homeowners to sell their land for a multi-billion-dollar project that was killed after the pieces ran.

Newsweek

Investigative Reporter | Kansas City, Mo. Sept. 2022 - Jan. 2024

• Broke the story of a 51-year-old intellectually disabled man with schizophrenia who died of starvation and dehydration in an Arkansas jail, losing half his body weight in the year he was imprisoned for not having $100 bail. Led to the largest settlement in Arkansas history for wrongful death and civil rights violations.
• Followed up with an in-depth series on failures of health care and basic human rights in jails across the country, including a trip to Arkansas that revealed gross failures in the conduct of a jail where an otherwise healthy inmate died mysteriously. Led to an ongoing lawsuit against the jail, sheriff and health care provider.
• Broke the international story of an alleged serial killer who preyed on women in a remote Iowa hillside, luring victims to a small Idaho town from nearby Omaha, Nebraska, to be killed and buried in wells dotting a 420-acre property. The ongoing investigation has drawn the interest of a Hollywood production company.

USA TODAY & Network

Midwest Criminal Justice Enterprise / Investigative Reporter | Kansas City, Mo. Jan. 2021 - Aug. 2022

• Covered failures in the justice system throughout the region, including a deep-dive into two men who were imprisoned despite prosecutors clearing them of all charges in murders across Missouri because a tough-on-crime state attorney general running for U.S. Senate interfered. Coverage led to the men’s release.
• Reported enterprise, daily and breaking news from the courts and the streets, including the trial of Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd. Coverage included spot pieces on protests and enterprise into the defense organization that backed the lone public defender with a $1 million donation.

Lead Stories

Managing Editor / Reporter | North Carolina Nov. 2019 - Jan. 2020

• Managed a team of 15 reporters at a leading fact-checking organization with a focus on verifying potentially harmful claims by politicians, businesspeople, clergy, doctors and law enforcement. Won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for reporting and editing stories debunking false claims about COVID-19.
• Led teams developing analytical and investigative pieces that forced the closure of multiple organizations that pushed false information, including false claims leading up to the 2020 Presidential Election.

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Contract Assistant Professor / Lecturer of Journalism | North Carolina Aug. 2016 - June 2020

• Taught journalism classes including introductory, advanced and specialized reporting, and trained students in document searches and introductory data journalism.
• Editor of Our Chatham, a local initiative in a mostly rural county to engage a new audience through reader-driven stories, flipping the editorial model to seek input from the community with in-depth stories.
• Editor of the UNC fact-finding initiative on North Carolina’s 9th special Congressional District race in 2019.

Northwestern University

Assistant Professor | Chicago and Evanston, Ill. May 2005 - Aug. 2016

• Taught enterprise, projects and investigative reporting and public affairs at undergraduate/graduate levels.
• Managing Editor for Medill’s part in the national Carnegie-Knight news innovation project, News21.
• Editor for the Medill News Service, which ran as a wire service for local and national outlets.
• Business Editor for The Medill News Service, running stories and enterprise on earnings and companies.

The Youth Project, JJIE

Founder / Editor / Bureau Chief | Chicago (While teaching at Medill) June 2012 - June 2020

• Created a student journalist news site at Medill for reporting on juvenile justice and child welfare issues.
• Served as Chicago Bureau Chief, producing, assigning and editing national stories out of Chicago on a racially skewed system, sex trafficking and more. Later named North Carolina bureau chief.

Contract Reporter / Midwest Correspondent | Chicago (While teaching at Medill) Jan. 2003 - Aug. 2008

Time | The Boston Globe | The New York Times | U.S. News & World Report | ABC News | Businessweek

• Investigated the scourge of fentanyl as it was emerging, drawing attention from local, state and federal officials.
• Covered court proceedings in the downfalls of two Illinois Governors – George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich, as well as the federal trial of the Canadian media baron Conrad Black.
• Investigated testing of Lake Michigan waters that showed the public was given bad information about when it was safe to swim, leading to changes in how the testing was understood and interpreted.

The Chicago Tribune

Chief Criminal Justice Reporter | Chicago April 1997 – Oct. 2002

• Hired for deep source relationships within Chicago Police, and state and federal law enforcement.
• Wrote on daily crime, courts, and did in-depth looks at racial balance in the department, homicide clearance rates, mass and spree killings, including the global search for Gianni Versace killer, Andrew Cunanan.
• Covered the nation’s first death penalty moratorium by Gov. George Ryan, imposed after reporting about prosecutorial misconduct and police missteps in capital cases. And I reported on access to DNA databases, the evolution of the scientific tool for solving crimes, including many investigations into the unsolved massacre of seven people working at a Brown’s Chicago & Pasta.
• Regular on-camera contributor to WGN TV and CLTV for breaking or ongoing investigations and stories.
• Ran investigations out of the federal court in Chicago, sourcing with federal prosecutors, the FBI and other Department of Justice investigators and agencies.
• Also served as a Chicago Public Schools reporter and covered suburban school districts and state policy.

The City News Bureau of Chicago

Reporter / Rewrite / Editor | Chicago Sept. 1994 - March 1997

• Covered education, transportation, local, city and state policy, City Hall, and state and federal courts for one of the country’s premier training grounds for journalists and oldest news services.
• Ran an investigation into the murders of three people, including a pregnant woman, and was the first to break news that the baby cut from the mother’s womb survived, changing the trajectory of the probe by authorities.
• Covered, among hundreds of other stories dealing with justice, housing, education and politics, Mayor Richard M. Daley, the probe into prominent U.S. politician Henry Hyde and the Democratic National Convention.

AWARDS/JOURNALISM

Pulitzer Prize: On a team of Chicago Tribune reporters for series on airline delays and failures in the industry – 2001

Harrison “Skip” Weber Investigate Reporting Award for investigation into an inmate's death and how the corrections system there operates in secrecy and with little accountability  – 2021

Sigma Delta Chi Award for debunking false narratives surrounding the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic – 2020

Editing and Mentorship Award from Undergraduate Research Fund: For guiding a student through reporting/writing/editing on an award-winning series of education stories – 2015

Peter Lisagor Award for breaking and non-deadline reporting (winner twice) -- 1998

EDUCATION

University of Kansas
B.A., English and History, concentration in Political Science

REFERENCES

• Reference contacts provided upon request.

• FELLOWSHIPS/MEMBERSHIPS
  Knight Fellow in Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park
  
• Investigative Reporters & Editors
• Institute for Nonprofit News (formerly the Investigative News Network)

C. S. Lewis