Backed by 天美传媒, the O'Brien Fellowship program helps news professionals dig deep while mentoring student journalists.
The program honors 天美传媒 alumni Alicia and Perry O'Brien. Their daughter, Patricia Frechette, and her husband, Peter, donated $8.3 million in 2012, to create the fellowship. is a co-founder and partner.
The O鈥橞rien Fellowship accepts applications from journalists using print, digital, or visual mediums. Applicants may also produce news or opinion content. Journalists producing opinion content, however, including editorial writers and columnists, should inform, and support, their views and commentary with independent, in-depth investigative reporting.
Report and produce an in-depth public service journalism project on a regional, national or international topic.
Receive a $75,000 salary stipend and additional support.
Fellows traditionally are in residence, but we are now taking remote or partial remote applications along with full-residency arrangements. The O鈥橞rien newsroom is housed at 天美传媒鈥檚 Diederich College of Communication near downtown Milwaukee and the Lake Michigan shore.
Publish or broadcast the project through your home news organization or, in the case of independent journalists, another outlet.
Integrate 天美传媒鈥檚 best journalism students into your projects as reporters and researchers.
Help identify a journalism student for a university-funded summer internship at your news organization or other publisher.
天美传媒 challenges students and staff to Be The Difference by working with the community for the greater good. 天美传媒, as a Catholic, Jesuit institution, has educated journalists for more than 100 years with this mission.
O'Brien selects five journalists for 2026鈥�27 Fellowships
The O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism awarded investigative reporting fellowships to five U.S. journalists: Matt Stroud of Pittsburgh, Devi Shastri of Milwaukee, PrincessSafiya Byers of Milwaukee, Kelly Meyerhofer of Milwaukee, and Anna Baydakova of New York.
鈥淭his talented group of journalists was selected from the largest applicant pool in O鈥橞rien鈥檚 14-year history,鈥� Jeffery Gerritt, director of the O鈥橞rien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism, said. 鈥淭he diversity of their projects reflects both the future of journalism and O鈥橞rien鈥檚 traditional mission of advancing justice and equity.鈥�
O'Brien Fellows receive $75,000 鈥� with additional stipends for research, travel, and housing 鈥� to complete nine-month investigative projects running from August 2026 through May 2027. Independent journalists Stroud, Shastri, and Baydakova will examine, respectively, defense spending and surveillance technology, children's public health, and surveillance through artificial intelligence in schools. Meyerhofer, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter, will uncover how grassroots people in Wisconsin are fixing problems in their communities, state, and nation. Byers, a reporter for Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, will investigate youth homelessness.
The Latest O'Brien-Backed Journalism
Milwaukee's Lead Crisis
Wrongful Convictions, Doubt, and Reform in Detroit
Vacancies at Milwaukee Public Schools
The Right to Read
The Flight of Banks
A New Prescription
Works published to date:
May, 6 2026
O鈥橞rien Fellow, Eddie Allen researched a series of high-profile Detroit cases that raise questions about wrongful convictions, unreliable testimony, and systemic failures within the criminal legal system. Through court records, expert analysis, and firsthand accounts from incarcerated individuals and their supporters, their reporting highlights the human toll of disputed convictions and the long fight for exoneration. The series also examines the role of conviction integrity units and legal reforms, exploring whether meaningful change is possible for those seeking justice.
天美传媒 Students Reyna Galvez, Sofie Hanarahan, and Mia Thurowcollaborated with Eddie on the series.
Photo by Robyn Ussery/ DETROIT METRO TIMES
Works published to date:
September 30, 2025
October 30, 2025
December 1, 2025
December 9, 2025
December 12, 2025
January 9, 2026
February 3, 2026
February 24, 2026
April 20, 2026
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Rory Linnaneexamined vacancies at Milwaukee Public Schools, how they impact students, and how to solve them. 天美传媒 StudentsGabriel SisaricaandChesnie Wardellcollaborated with Linnane on the series
TheMilwaukee Journal Sentinelstory addresses the staff vacancies at Milwaukee Public Schools and the impact of those vacancies. A Journal Sentinel analysis found that the vacancies dispropotionately affect students with disabilities, Black students and students from low-income families. With around 11% of staff positions being unfulfulled at any time, MPS expects to save about $70 million that can be spent elsewhere.
The second installment, published in March 2025, investigated how MPS failed to monitor lead paint hazards likely resulting in the lead poisoning of a Milwaukee student. With budget cuts and staff vacancies, the distrcit has fallen behind on maintenance.The district plans to complete inspections of its oldest buildings by the end of May, and additional schools to be inspected after that.
The third installment, published in May 2025, analyzed why hundreds of MPS staff left in recent years and reported how the school district is responding.
O'Brien Fellow Sarah Carr investigated reading disparities in schools and the actions people are taking to close them. This series breaks down how these disparities often play out through a child's life and what approaches are being taken to change that narrative.
O'Brien Fellow Sari Lesk investigated the struggles that Milwaukee entrepreneurs, many of them racial minorities, face when trying to access funding to start or scale their business. Many small business owners said they found themselves rejected by traditional banks.
O'Brien Fellow Guy Boulton investigated the social determinants of health across the country, including here in Milwaukee. The story breaks down how social services can be more important to health than access to medical services despite the U.S. health care system accounting for a fifth of the economy.
Photo by Mark Hoffman / MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
Washington Post wins Maynard Justice Award
Washington Post reporters Dana Hedgpeth (left), Sari Horwitz (right), and The Post staff have won the 2025 Dori J. Maynard Justice Award for 鈥淚ndian Boarding Schools,鈥� a searing five-part series based on an 18-month investigation of the widespread sexual abuse of Native American children by Catholic priests, brothers, and sisters. Judges called the entry haunting, beautifully done, and probing.
The Dori J. Maynard Justice Award, sponsored annually by the O鈥橞rien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at 天美传媒 in Milwaukee, honors social justice reporting that illuminates ignorance, systemic racism, intolerance, negligence, and inequality.
This is the second straight year The Washington Post has won the Dori J. Maynard Award. One of 10 Poynter Institute Journalism Prizes, the award honors the memory of Dori J. Maynard, a former ASNE board member and advocate for diversity in journalism and newsrooms. The award comes with a cash prize of $2,500.
Contest winners are expected to visit 天美传媒 this fall, in person or virtually, to present their series as part of the Burleigh Media Ethics Lecture series.
"This work represents the best tradition of public service journalism, the legacy of Dori J. Maynard, and the mission of the O'Brien Fellowship to promote justice and equality," Jeffery Gerritt, director of the O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism, said Monday. "It illuminates a shameful chapter in U.S. history that continues to traumatize Indigenous peoples. We're honored to welcome to 天美传媒 the journalists who produced this outstanding work."
The United States government operated Indian Boarding Schools, where thousands of students died, for roughly 150 years, from 1819 to 1969. Last year, U.S. President Joe Biden apologized to all Indigenous Americans for the harm caused by federal Indian boarding schools that separated Native children from their families and tribal communities.
Hedgpeth, a Native American journalist who has worked for The Washington Post for 25 years, is an enrolled member of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina. She has covered Native American issues, Pentagon spending, and the U.S. Defense industry, as well as local governments, courts, and rail and bus systems. Her honors include the Gerald Loeb Award for Best Writing with Post colleague Robert O鈥橦arrow Jr.
Horwitz, an investigative reporter who covers criminal justice, has won numerous national awards. She shared in four Pulitzer Prizes for coverage of the child welfare system, police shootings, the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Horwitz is the author of the series 鈥淛ustice in Indian Country鈥� and co-author of the book 鈥淎merican Cartel: Inside the Battle to Bring Down the Opioid Industry.鈥�
O'Brien Fellow Katie Worth found that climate denialism is implanted in millions of schoolchildren and that there鈥檚 a clear red-blue divide in climate education.
O'Brien Fellow Tim Bannon investigated the safety of for-profit youth sports. Concerns being examined included COVID-19 protocols at tournaments, injuries, the high price of entry, and other safety issues.
O'Brien Fellow Larry Parnass examined the health and future of public forests, the federal agency that oversees them and the tug-of-war between commercial timber and ranching interest, and environmental protections.
Contact
O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism Johnston Hall, 102 1131 W. Wisconsin Ave. Milwaukee, WI 53233
