Center for Public Integrity welcomes new staff

Introduction

The Center for Public Integrity has promoted veteran staff member Jamie Smith Hopkins to editor and is making key additions to the nonprofit investigative news organization’s reporting and audience teams.

Corey Mitchell, an associate editor and reporter at Education Week, will join Public Integrity on Feb. 22 as a senior reporter covering education.

Lisa Yanick Litwiller, director of audience for the community division of Hearst newspapers, will join the organization on March 1 as director of audience.

Ashley Clarke, a production assistant and weekend assignment editor at NBC 4 in Washington, D.C., will start March 22 as audience engagement editor.

Hopkins has served as a deputy editor, environment editor and reporter at Public Integrity, and last year co-managed the climate change series, “Hidden Epidemics,” a collaboration with Columbia Journalism Investigations and a coalition of local news organizations across the country. She joined the organization in 2014 after 15 years at The Baltimore Sun.

At Education Week, Mitchell has specialized in reporting on students with distinct needs, including English-language learners and students with disabilities. Previously, he was a Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where he reported on K-12 education and immigrant and Indigenous communities.

Prior to her audience development roles with Hearst, Litwiller was investigative systems editor for the company’s Connecticut newspapers, where she led a national investigation into sex abuse at Boys & Girls Clubs that won an Investigative Reporters & Editors award last year.

Clarke is a University of Maryland journalism graduate who interned for Street Sense in Washington, D.C., and Capital News Service before joining NBC 4.

“We’re excited to continue adding to the editing and reporting team that Public Integrity is building to pursue investigative reporting about the country’s widening inequality in education, housing, employment, health care and beyond,” said Editor in Chief Matt DeRienzo. “And we’re looking forward to the many opportunities ahead to engage with local news collaborators and readers who are passionate about this mission.”