Two OPC scholarship winners are part of an effort The Associated Press announced May 12 to strengthen its investigative reporting.
Jeff Horwitz, who won the OPC Foundation Scholarship in memory of Fred Wiegold in 2009, was hired to join the AP’s Washington-based investigation team, which won the 2012 Pulitzer for investigative reporting. Horwitz will finish a Knight-Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia University in late May. He was a reporter for American Banker between 2009 and 2013, and a finalist for a 2012 Gerald Loeb award.
The AP is also expanding its U.S. investigations team, which emphasizes state and local data-driven projects; Garance Burke will join that team. Burke, a member of AP’s San Francisco bureau, won the Emanuel R. Freedman Scholarship in 2004. Her bio on twitter says: “I’m an Associated Press writer, truth sleuth & data wrangler based in San Francisco. I tweet & code in various languages.”
“Customers, readers and viewers the world over rely on AP for fast and accurate coverage of breaking news events,” said AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll. “And they count on aggressive newsgathering to give them something fresh – the revelations, investigations, new angles and images that no one else has.
“That’s why we continue to deepen our commitment to investigative work and are making a number of important hires and assignment changes.”