How To Apply
The Watchdog Writers Group is accepting applications for its paid reporting positions and scholarships for the 2025-2026 academic year. The application process is open to graduate and undergraduate students. Applications accepted until April 24, with interviews on campus, Wednesday April 30. Selected applicants will be notified in early May.
The yearlong program partners students with experienced investigative journalist writing a book for a major publisher. The student will help the author conduct research and reporting, while also working on an investigative project of their own. Independent, self-motivated students with a passionate interest in investigative reporting and narrative writing are encouraged to apply. WWG authors are currently writing books about the history and future of immigration raids in the meatpacking industry, the US defense industry, a narrative account of the racial wealth gap, and the U.S. credit-reporting system’s role in America’s inequality crisis. New authors will be named for the program in June.
To apply for a position with the Watchdog Writers Group, please contact WWG Director Christopher Leonard at: ChristopherLeonard@missouri.edu
Watchdog Writers Group funds the type of deep investigative journalism that is under-financed by the private marketplace. We do this by giving annual fellowships to authors, and by hiring students to be reporters alongside them. In doing this, the program hopes to revitalize newsgathering in the middle of the country about vitally important issues
The Team
THE AUTHORS, CLASS OF 2023
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Caleb Gayle
Caleb Gayle is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a professor at Northeastern University.
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Sarah Smarsh
Sarah Smarsh is a journalist who has covered socioeconomic class, politics and public policy for The New York Times, National Geographic, Harper’s, and many other publications.
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Alisa Roth
Alisa Roth is a contributor to Marketplace, NPR, and other outlets, who specializes in mental health, criminal justice and other social policy issues.
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Mya Frazier
Mya Frazier is writing a book that expands on her recent investigation for The New York Times Magazine into America’s housing crisis and the credit reporting system. During the fellowship, she will research the relationship between class mobility and the credit system.
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THE AUTHORS, CLASS OF 2022
FELLOW
Sarah Smarsh
Sarah Smarsh is a journalist who has covered socioeconomic class, politics and public policy for The New York Times, National Geographic, Harper’s, and many other publications.
READ BIO
FELLOW
Alisa Roth
Alisa Roth is a contributor to Marketplace, NPR, and other outlets, who specializes in mental health, criminal justice and other social policy issues.
READ BIO
FELLOW
Shoshana Walter
Shoshana Walter is writing a book that builds on her award-winning reporting for Reveal on unpaid work camps masquerading as rehab. Her book, “Untreated,” will chronicle the many problems plaguing the country’s addiction treatment system, how it got this way and how we could do better for the millions of people in the US struggling with addiction.
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Michael Grunwald
Michael Grunwald is working on a book for Simon & Schuster about how to feed the world without frying the world. It’s about the food we eat, the farms that make the food, the forests that get cleared to make room for the farms, and the search for technological and political solutions that can prevent us from eating the earth.
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FELLOW
Mya Frazier
Mya Frazier is writing a book that expands on her recent investigation for The New York Times Magazine into America’s housing crisis and the credit reporting system. During the fellowship, she will research the relationship between class mobility and the credit system.
READ BIO
THE AUTHORS, CLASS OF 2021
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Pamela Colloff
Staff writer, New York Times Magazine
and Senior Reporter at ProPublica
Writing a book about the criminal justice system and jailhouse informants.
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FELLOW
Patricia “P.J.” Huffstutter
Agribusiness Reporter
at Reuters News
Writing a book about the farm debt crisis in rural America.
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John Eligon
New York Times National Correspondent
Developing a book project about the Black Lives Matter movement.
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DIRECTOR
Christopher Leonard
Executive Director
of the WWG
Writing a book about a company at the heart of American political and economic affairs.
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THE STUDENTS, CLASS OF 2022
Mavis Chan
Mavis Chan is a senior majoring in journalism and political science at the University of Missouri.
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Teghan Simonton
Teghan Simonton is a graduate student at the University of Missouri studying investigative reporting.
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Beatrice Bankauskaite
Beatrice Bankauskaite is a Fulbright grantee and a graduate student at the University of Missouri studying documentary and photojournalism.
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Claudia Rivera-Cotto
Claudia Rivera-Cotto is a graduate student at the University of Missouri in data and investigative journalism.
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Jana Rose Schleis
Jana Rose Schleis is a second year M.A. student in the Missouri School of Journalism. She’s studying investigative journalism, government reporting and public policy.
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Regan Mertz
Regan Mertz is a graduate student studying Documentary and Photojournalism at the Missouri School of Journalism.
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Kelly Dereuck
Kelly Dereuck is a graduate student researching the use of public records to report on private equity.
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THE STUDENTS, CLASS OF 2021
Steven Garrison
Working with Pamela Colloff to investigate the criminal justice system in Missouri and
other states.
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Peng “Fion” Chen
Working with P.J. Huffstutter to build a unique, searchable database of farm debt and loan defaults across America.
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Kelly Dereuck
Working with Christopher Leonard to research the modern history
of U.S. banks.
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Recent Stories
Watch here for new stories regularly.
“The Unequal Effects of School Closings”
Alec MacGillis
The New Yorker/ProPublica, August 2024
“How a Refugee’s American Dream Ended in a Police Killing”
Ted Genoways
The New Republic, May 2023
“Black, Evangelical and Torn”
Caleb Gayle
New York Times Magazine, March 2023
“The Out Crowd”
Molly O’Toole
This American Life, November 2019