The 2015-16 residential O’Brien Fellows are Justin George, a crime reporter at The Baltimore Sun; Liz Navratil, a crime and courts reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and Dave Umhoefer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The nonresidential fellow is Miranda Spivack, a former editor and reporter at The Washington Post who lives in Maryland.
Begun in 2012-13, the O’Brien Fellowship has already enabled seven newsroom professionals to produce the highest caliber of work – stories with the potential to change policies and lives. The residential O'Brien Fellows spend the year based in the college, then return to their home news organizations with an in-depth public service journalism project ready for publication or broadcast. Spivack will also produce significant work that news organizations will publish.
All four fellows will also help to develop the next generation of journalists. They will integrate Marquette students into their projects as reporters and assistants – giving them first-hand experience alongside a veteran journalist and the potential of a university-sponsored internship next summer at one of the newsrooms.
“The O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism is unlike other university-based opportunities in which journalists spend a year removed from producing stories,” Diederich College Dean Lori Bergen said. “Our fellows come to Marquette and work here and elsewhere every day toward producing a series of stories that end up months later on the front pages of their newspapers.”
Learn more about the 2015-2016 O’Brien Fellows and the announcement of their selection.