Updates to AP’s global investigations team

I am thrilled to announce some new additions and changes that round out AP’s global investigative team. The reorganized unit adds two new faces – a reporter and a video leader — and also carves out a new team to focus on government and corporate accountability at a time when that has never been more important to our journalism.

Our overall mission remains unchanged: To produce and enable big, ambitious, exclusive AP journalism from around the world that our customers can’t get anywhere else.

The team will work closely with all of AP’s regions and verticals to advance this goal, and to create high-impact journalism in all formats: text, video, photos, data, interactives and audio.

• On Monday, we welcome reporter James LaPorta, formerly of Newsweek, who joins the international investigations team covering intelligence, national security and the military. James is a former Marine infantryman who did two tours in Afghanistan. He also worked as an intelligence cell chief and was a military adviser and technical consultant for NBC’s critically-acclaimed series “This Is Us.” He also reviewed military movies for GQ. In 2018, he contributed reporting to an Emmy-nominated PBS Frontline documentary about neo-Nazis and white supremacy groups in the U.S. military after the violent 2017 protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. 
• We are also launching a new Corporate and Government Accountability and FOIA team, which will be led in a player-coach capacity by Los-Angeles based reporter Justin Pritchard. The team includes reporters Reese Dunklin in Dallas, Mitch Weiss in South Carolina and Holbrook Mohr in Mississippi. This team will focus on short- and long-term business and government accountability investigations and will also lead efforts to more effectively use the Freedom of Information Act to enhance reporting across AP.
• Jeannie Ohm, enterprise video editor, joins us as lead video producer for Global Investigations. Jeannie will own our efforts to generate more top-level investigative stories for AP’s video clients around the world, a long-standing goal for the investigative team. She will also continue work across AP departments, including on some of our most ambitious video-led journalism, as she has been doing as a leader of the enterprise team. Before joining the AP, Jeannie worked as a White House and Pentagon correspondent for NBC News/MSNBC.     

And for your reference, here is how the rest of the global investigative team is now arrayed:

• The national investigative team is led by Alison Kodjak, who will become deputy investigations editor and is based in Washington. The reporters on this team include Michael Biesecker, Juliet Linderman, Richard Lardner and Stephen Braun, all based in Washington. Reporter Martha Mendoza is based in Santa Cruz, California. Reporter Michael Rezendes, who joined AP as part of the expansion of our global coverage of religion, also is part of the team and is based in New York. 
• The international investigations team is led by me and consists of reporters Maggie Michael in Cairo; Erika Kinetz, in Shanghai; Margie Mason, who will soon move from Jakarta to Honolulu; Garance Burke, who returns this summer from fellowship leave and is based in San Francisco; Robin McDowell, who is based in Minneapolis; and LaPorta, who will be based in Delray Beach, Florida.

Please join me in welcoming James to the AP, and Jeannie to the Global Investigations team. We look forward to working closely with all of you in the busy months ahead.