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The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO has been awarded a Local Reporting Network grant from ProPublica. The grant will support work by journalist Brandi Kellam, an Emmy-award winning reporter who has produced national stories for CBS News. Kellam, one of five journalists chosen from around the country for the highly-competitive grant, will spend a year with VCIJ at WHRO. ProPublica is the leading nonprofit newsroom in the U.S., regularly winning national awards for its investigations.
The Local News Reporting grants have paired veteran journalists at ProPublica with local reporters from public media companies, broadcast networks and newspapers. A collaboration with the Anchorage Daily News was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2020.
The grant greatly enhances VCIJ at WHRO’s mission to expand community-supported, independent local and state journalism. The award also furthers WHRO’s mission to expand its newsroom and provide more quality, unbiased reporting on issues vital to the community.
“Over the past several years journalism at local and regional levels has been particularly hard hit which is why WHRO is focused on expanding our newsroom," said Bert Schmidt, president and CEO of WHRO Public Media. “ProPublica’s investment is much needed and appreciated.”
The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism, started in 2019, was acquired by WHRO in May 2022. Its focus is to bring quality, watchdog journalism to Virginia as legacy media companies decline.
“ProPublica is the gold standard of nonprofit investigative journalism. VCIJ was launched to replicate their efforts in Virginia,” said Louis Hansen, senior editor at VCIJ at WHRO. “We’re thrilled to add Brandi Kellam – a talented, proven and award-winning journalist – to our growing team.”
About Brandi Kellam
Kellam, an Emmy award winning journalist, has reported and produced for CBS News. She contributed to the network’s historic coverage of the 2020 Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump and the death of Minneapolis resident George Floyd in police custody.
In 2021, Kellam was awarded a fellowship from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center For Journalism and Civil and Human Rights to follow how public policy and urbanization disproportionately impacts black residents in Newport News, Virginia.
Kellam has also been an instructor, leading course discussion on journalism for the S.I Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University where she earned a master’s degree in broadcast and digital journalism. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
