EVANSTON, IL – The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the Center for Public Integrity have named Mattie Quinn as the second recipient of a $15,000 McCormick National Security Reporting Fellowship at the Center. She will receive $15,000, plus benefits, and spend five months working at the nonprofit investigative newsroom’s Washington headquarters, starting immediately.
Mattie will work under the supervision of R. Jeffrey Smith, the managing editor for national security at CPI and a Pulitzer Prize-winning former writer and editor at The Washington Post. She will contribute to the center’s “Up in Arms” blog and also write short and long-term investigative projects. She was selected by a Medill committee led by Josh Meyer, director of education and outreach of the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative. She comes to Medill from Arkansas, where she was the managing editor of a daily newspaper, and as a Medill student has reported on urban affairs in Chicago and health and science issues in Washington, D.C. She recently traveled to South Africa on a grant to report on lightning safety.
“We’re very excited to be able to give one of our students the opportunity to work at such a storied Washington institution as the Center For Public Integrity,” said Meyer. “Mattie is a talented journalist with tremendous promise, and we can’t wait to see what kind of important national security stories she’ll find while working with an editor of Jeff’s stature.”
“Mattie will help us hold national security decision-makers and lawmakers accountable for their work, and participate in our probes into government waste, fraud and abuse,” said Smith. “We’re thrilled to get one of Medill’s best. She joins our national security reporting team when all these defense accountability issues have moved higher on the national agenda.”
“The McCormick Foundation has a long tradition of supporting journalists who cover national security issues,” said Clark Bell, the foundation’s Journalism Program Director. “We believe this partnership enhances CPI’s coverage, while providing an invaluable learning opportunity for an accomplished Medill student.”
The first National Security Reporting Fellow, Rebecca LaFlure, did ground-breaking work on topics such as threats to nuclear facilities, arms trading, whistleblowers and military security clearance processes.
The National Security Reporting Fellowship at the Center is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
The Medill National Security Journalism Initiative, also funded by the McCormick Foundation, has been working since 2009 to find better ways of teaching, and covering, national security topics in this changing and challenging media environment.
Founded in 1989 by Charles Lewis, the Center for Public Integrity is one of the country’s oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations. Its mission: To enhance democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of trust by powerful public and private institutions, using the tools of investigative journalism.
