About the Medill Investigative Lab

At the Medill Investigative Lab, we believe that the best way to learn journalism is to do journalism. Students study budgets, court cases and crime logs, interview stakeholders and public officials, probe critical data and trends, and leave the classroom behind for reporting trips in communities across the country and around the world. The stories have had sweeping impact and drawn a series of national journalism awards, including the George Polk Award, the Award for Excellence in Health Care Journalism and the Overseas Press Club Malcolm Forbes Award for best international business news reporting. A series of 2023 stories was named one of six finalists in Harvard University's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.

Debbie Cenziper

Director of Medill Investigative Lab

Debbie Cenziper is an associate professor and the director of investigative reporting at Medill. She also oversees the Medill Investigative Lab. Besides teaching, Cenziper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and nonfiction author who writes for ProPublica. She formerly worked at The Washington Post.

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Copy editing provided by
Bernadette Kinlaw, Medill alum (1988)

Michael Sallah

MIL Media Fellow

Michael Sallah is a veteran reporter and editor. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, he has worked on the investigations teams of The Washington Post, The Miami Herald and USA TODAY on stories ranging from public corruption and police abuses to international money laundering.

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Matthew Orr

MIL multimedia adviser
and contributor

Matthew Orr is an assistant professor at Medill. He teaches video and broadcast production in Medill’s Washington, D.C., program. Orr is an award-winning reporter and filmmaker with nearly 20 years of experience in the field.

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Elise De Los Santos

Medill Reports Publisher

Elise De Los Santos is a lecturer at Medill and the publisher of Medill Reports. She teaches undergraduate and graduate classes on reporting and writing. Prior to joining the faculty full-time in 2021, she worked in various editing roles at the Chicago Tribune.

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Medill students in the public eye

The reporting team shared 11 tips for covering science and the medical device industry with Editor & Publisher.
Students in the Medill Investigative Lab worked with ProPublica and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to produce "Shadow Diplomats." Nine countries have so far announced changes.
MIL Director Debbie Cenziper and MIL grad student Joel Jacobs train Report for America reporters about covering the coronavirus crisis in nursing homes.
MIL FEATURED IN THE IRE JOURNAL: Cenziper and student Joel Jacobs described reporting efforts on nursing homes in the winter edition of the IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) Journal.

If you are interested in advancing Medill’s work in investigative journalism, you can donate to the Medill Investigative Lab. Click on “Search School and Program Funds.” Search for “Medill Investigative Lab.”

Debbie Cenziper

Debbie Cenziper is an associate professor and the director of investigative reporting at Medill. She also oversees the Medill Investigative Lab. Besides teaching, Cenziper is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and nonfiction author who writes for The Washington Post. She spent three years at The George Washington University before joining the faculty of Medill.

Over the years, Cenziper’s investigative stories have exposed wrongdoing, prompted Congressional hearings and led to changes in federal and local laws. In her classes at Medill, Cenziper and her students focus on social justice investigative reporting.

Cenziper has won dozens of awards in American print journalism, including the Robert F. Kennedy Award for reporting about human rights and the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University. She received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 at The Miami Herald for a series of stories about corrupt affordable housing developers who were stealing from the poor. A year before that, she was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for stories about dangerous breakdowns in the nation’s hurricane-tracking system.

Cenziper is a frequent speaker at universities, writing conferences and book events. Her first book, “Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality,” (William Morrow, 2016) was named one of the most notable books of the year by The Washington Post. Her second book, “Citizen 865: The Hunt for Hitler’s Hidden Soldiers in America,” was released by Hachette Books in November 2019.

Cenziper is based on Medill’s Washington, D.C. campus, working with undergraduate and graduate students on investigative stories.