What The Hell America!

ProPublica announced on Thursday that Wendi C. Thomas, the founder of the award-winning nonprofit newsroom MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, will be rejoining ProPublica’s Distinguished Fellows program. Thomas will pursue investigative projects, in partnership with ProPublica, through April 2027.

“I am beyond excited to welcome Wendi back to the Local Reporting Network,” said Charles Ornstein, ProPublica’s managing editor for local. “Wendi knows Memphis, knows the South and has been an important voice for those who are often ignored, righting wrongs and forcing those in power to confront uncomfortable truths.”

Thomas was a ProPublica Local Reporting Network partner from 2019 to 2021, during which time her series, “Profiting From the Poor,” exposed the predatory debt collection practices of the largest health care system in Memphis and led the hospital to backtrack and eliminate patients’ debts. The series won a Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, a Gerald Loeb Award for local reporting, an Association of Health Care Journalists award for business reporting and tied for first place for the Investigative Reporters & Editors Award in the print/online category.

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism was founded in 2017 after Thomas conceived of the idea during a fellowship at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism the year prior. Launched with $3,000, MLK50 has grown to an organization with an annual budget of more than $2 million, making a measurable difference for the most vulnerable Memphians. Thomas previously held the roles of metro columnist and assistant managing editor at The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, and she worked for The Charlotte Observer, The Tennessean and The Indianapolis Star. She is a graduate of Butler University and a proud product of Memphis City Schools.

In addition to the recognition she received for her work as a Local Reporting Network partner, Thomas is the 2023 winner of the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence and the 2022 recipient of the Freedom of the Press Local Champion Award from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. In recognition of her work to create MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, she received the 2019 National Association of Black Journalists’ Best Practices award and the 2018 Journalist of the Year by Journalism and Women Symposium.

“ProPublica enabled me to do some of the best work of my career and learn from some of the smartest minds in the business,” Thomas said. “I’m delighted to be returning to create more ‘good trouble’ on behalf of the city’s most vulnerable residents.”

The Local Reporting Network, which began in 2018, has now worked on more than 100 different projects with over 80 newsrooms. As part of ProPublica’s 50 State Initiative, announced last year, we will work with news organizations in every state on accountability stories over the next several years.