BuzzFeed News announced Tuesday that Melissa Segura will be its first investigative fellow. Segura has reported at Sports Illustrated and SI.com since 2001, when she was a college intern.
“Melissa reports deeply and writes beautifully, and she produced magnificent stories for Sports Illustrated,” said Mark Schoofs, investigations and projects editor at BuzzFeed News, via email. “Now, she will get the chance to deploy her tremendous investigative talents into other subject areas. We can’t wait to share with our readers her new work.”
Melissa Segura, submitted photo
In October, BuzzFeed announced the one-year fellowship along with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with the intention of bringing a more diverse pool of journalists into the investigative field. In an email, Segura wrote that she’s grateful to BuzzFeed News and Columbia for making a commitment to investigative journalism.
“This fellowship couldn’t have come at a better time for journalism. It’s no secret that newsrooms everywhere are scaling back on investigative work while BuzzFeed is deepening its commitment to telling difficult and complex stories,” she wrote. “It’s also no secret that the compositions of newsrooms staffs often don’t reflect the communities they cover. Recent unrest across the country, linked to the deaths of unarmed black men, has been a response to systematic marginalization and silencing of entire communities. I believe that journalism has an important role in helping to give voice to these communities and I also believe that reporters from diverse backgrounds bring crucial perspectives that ensure that we tell the whole truth.”
From her bio page on SI.com:
As an undergraduate intern in 2001, her reporting helped reveal that Danny Almonte, star of the Little League World Series, was 14, two years older than the maximum age allowed in Little League. Segura has since covered a range of sports for SI, from baseball to mixed martial arts, with a keen eye on how the games we play affect the lives we lead.
In 2012, Segura wrote “The Other Half Of the Story,” looking at the women who have to care for former NFL players suffering from the long-term impact of concussions.
Earlier on Tuesday, BuzzFeed announced that Joshua Hersh was the new Michael Hastings Reporting Fellow. And on Monday, Schoofs wrote about BuzzFeed’s growing investigative team.
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