Investigative Reporter · Editor · Data Journalist
I'm Matt Krupnick, a Chicago-based investigative reporter and editor. For more than two decades my accountability journalism has appeared in ProPublica, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and Newsweek — and I'm looking for my next full-time newsroom.
Published in
Selected work
Congress today grants the colleges a quarter-billion dollars per year less than the inflation-adjusted amount they should receive, ProPublica found. [T]he federal government has never funded schools at the level called for in the statute, and even experts struggle to explain the basis for current funding levels.Read the story →
[W]hile Belzoni claims that it once had more millionaires than any other city in Mississippi, nearly a quarter of households in this delta town make less than $10,000 a year, with a median household income of about $28,000. That compares to a statewide household income of $42,000, meaning Belzoni is significantly poorer than most other places in the nation's poorest state.Read the story →
States such as Mississippi are supplying hundreds of firearms originally bought from licensed shops and, eventually, illegally transported to the city. What helps to feed that pipeline are Mississippi's lax gun laws that allow almost anyone to sell a firearm to any other state resident, making it difficult to track those weapons or prevent them from being trafficked to locales far outside of the South.Read the story →
It's hard to know how often rural murders of Black victims like Lawson go unsolved, but anecdotal evidence suggests the problem is widespread. [S]mall towns are often unprepared for major crimes or for demographic changes, which can be surprising for officers who grew up in a relatively homogeneous community. And that doesn't always bode well for people from minority communities, whether they're victims, witnesses or suspects.Read the story →
Canned olives aren't usually such an exciting prospect. They tend to be briny with little hint of the, well, oliveness under the salt. But Grabers are a different experience altogether: big, meaty and green with a rosy hue, and something like eating a pod of pure olive oil.Read the story →
One out of every four federal dollars lent for undergraduate education last year went to parents and a stunning 22 percent of that $1.6 trillion in outstanding student debt, $336 billion in all, is held by people 50 and older, who typically borrowed to help pay for a child's or grandchild's higher education.Read the story →
Stuffed to the brim with old amplifiers, stereos, speakers, turntables, reel-to-reel tape players, CD players and other assorted equipment, the 75-year-old cash-only business is a haphazard audio throwback. Sokolov has owned the repair shop since 1998, just four years after he immigrated from the Soviet Union as a Jewish refugee.Read the story →
Experience
Freelance — national and international outlets
Investigations and enterprise reporting for national and international outlets, including a ProPublica series on the underfunding of tribal colleges, gun-trafficking accountability reporting and investigations into food and environmental issues. Reported regularly from Mexico while living in Oaxaca, and from the United Kingdom.
Bay Area News Group — San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times
Spent a decade on the staff of the Bay Area's largest newspaper group, covering higher education, courts, public safety and general assignments for three daily papers with a combined circulation of 600,000. Coordinated regional higher-education coverage across the group, and investigative work prompted firings and policy changes at several public agencies, including a community college, a college district and hospital districts.
Chicago Headline Club — Society of Professional Journalists
Served on the board of the nation's largest SPJ chapter.
Recognition
Education Writers Association — named one of the nation's best education beat reporters.
Selected for the fellowship supporting the tribal colleges investigation with ProPublica.
UC Berkeley Advanced Media Institute.
Now Cal Poly Humboldt — graduated 1998.
IRE member.
CJA member.
For editors
I bring twenty-plus years of sourcing, data skills and investigations that hold up. I file clean copy on deadline and can take a story from a one-line tip to a fully-documented piece. I speak regularly on panels at investigative, data and education reporting conferences and to college investigative reporting classes.
Beats I cover
Toolkit
Languages
Open to freelance commissions now — and to full-time reporter or editor roles. Send a pitch, an assignment or a job description and I'll respond quickly.