Katherine “Katie” Schulder-Battis joins The Chicago Reporter to fill the position of Multimedia Editor/Investigations Reporter. While new to the team her name and work may strike a familiar chord.
Last year, Katie moved from Brooklyn to earn an MSJ at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism with a concentration in Social Justice. It’s at this juncture when Katie peaked the interest of The Chicago Reporter that she began to contribute long-form investigation pieces as an intern and freelance. We are happy to formally welcome Katie to our growing team.
Katie’s projects are centered on topics that explore issues of access and equality on a local level, and she has written about criminal justice reform, healthcare policy and legislation and climate change. Her multimedia projects use narrative storytelling, photography and data visualizations to explore local and global issues through a solutions lens.
Last summer, she traveled to Mongolia to report on climate change and culture through the Pulitzer Center’s Campus Consortium Fellowship. Before attending Medill, Katie majored in English Literature and Visual Arts at Fordham University, where she enjoyed covering stories on arts and culture.
Katie will lead the multimedia department amid its shift from a commissioned newsrooms model to distributed newsroom, which focuses on delivering relevant stories to the right audience consistently across integrated multimedia channels. Katie will contribute to accelerated content production, strategy and ideation in collaboration with the investigations and features departments. Katie will report to L. Nicole Trottie, Publisher & Editor-In-Chief.
“I was very pleased with the caliber of the pool that we had for this role,” Trottie said. “Candidates ran the gamut from veteran hard-news reporters, to bloggers and social media managers. But what stood out about Katie is a great balance between being a investigations journalist who has serious news chops, and someone who understands the landscape of social justice work and the importance of holding power to account, as she has exhibited time and time again.”
Thanks for helping us welcome Katie to the team.
You can check out Katie’s work on prison reform and accountability at the following links:
How Chicago’s Electronic Monitoring Program Fails Women and Domestic Violence Survivors
Cook County Jail’s ‘Start Early’ doula program addresses the needs of its pregnant population