Annie Waldman

Reporter

Photo of Annie Waldman

Annie Waldman is a reporter at ProPublica covering health care. A piece she published with The New York Times on a New Jersey student debt agency prompted a new law and several new bills, aimed at increasing consumer protections for student borrowers and their families. Following her reporting on the largest accreditor of for-profit colleges, the U.S. Department of Education stripped the agency of its powers. Her reporting with Erica Green of The New York Times led to a federal civil rights investigation of discrimination against Native American students on a reservation in Montana.

In 2018, she contributed to the “Lost Mothers” series, which investigated the high rate of maternal mortality in the United States. This series won the 2018 Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting, received a George Polk Award, a Peabody and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for explanatory reporting. Following her reporting on maternal mortality in New York, the city launched a $12.8 million initiative to reduce maternal deaths and complications among women of color.

She graduated with honors from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia, where she was the recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Brown Institute Computational Journalism Award. Her stories have been published in The New York Times, the Atlantic, Vice, BBC News, The Chronicle of Higher Education and Consumer Reports.

She has been a finalist twice and won two awards from the Education Writers Association for her education reporting. She has won an award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and was a finalist for the Loeb Awards for her reporting with Paul Kiel and Al Shaw on the racial disparity of wage garnishment.

Prior to joining ProPublica, she was a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Israel, where she reported on the plight of refugees from Darfur and Eritrea. She was also a recipient of a residency at Cité International des Arts in Paris, France. She had a documentary film in the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, on the lives of homeless high school students after Hurricane Katrina, which was later broadcast nationally on PBS. She produced "Phantom Cowboys," a documentary about male adolescence in small industry towns, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018.

Her PGP Key ID is E8F41874.

We Asked Public Universities for Their Professors’ Conflicts of Interest — and Got the Runaround

We assembled the first state-by-state database of professors’ outside income and employment. But it’s far from complete.

Medical Professors Are Supposed to Share Their Outside Income With the University of California. But Many Don’t.

A comparison of University of California filings with federal data shows that moonlighting professors are shortchanging taxpayers.

Help Us Report On Conflicts of Interest at Universities

We have collected more than 37,000 financial disclosures for professors and staff at about 20 public universities and researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. Now, we need your help.

Dollars for Profs: Search Conflicts of Interest

For the first time ever, you can see conflict of interest and financial disclosure records for employees of universities across the country.

How Teach for America Evolved Into an Arm of the Charter School Movement

Documents obtained by ProPublica show that the Walton foundation, a staunch supporter of school choice and Teach for America’s largest private funder, was paying $4,000 for every teacher placed in a traditional public school — and $6,000 for every one placed in a charter school.

U.S. to Investigate Discrimination Against Native American Students on Montana Reservation

The Education Department said it will look into a long-standing complaint of racial inequities in Wolf Point schools after The New York Times and ProPublica wrote a story about the issue.

District of Despair: On a Montana Reservation, Schools Favor Whites Over Native Americans

Tribes say that discrimination by the Wolf Point School District contributes to some of their youth dropping out, harming themselves or even committing suicide. But the Trump administration hasn’t acted on their complaint.

On a Reservation, a Second Chance for Prisoners and Their Warden

As a school board member in Wolf Point, Montana, Ron Jackson couldn’t help struggling Native students as much as he hoped. Now some are inmates under his supervision.

DeVos’ Inspector General to Audit Dismissals of Civil Rights Complaints

The review could shed light on the Education Department’s reluctance, documented by a series of ProPublica articles, to investigate alleged discrimination by school districts and colleges.

Reporting Recipe: How to Investigate Racial Disparities at Your School

We published a trove of education data on more than 96,000 public schools across the country. Here’s how journalists can use our database to find local stories.

Charlottesville’s Other Jim Crow Legacy: Separate and Unequal Education

The Virginia city has one of the widest achievement gaps in the U.S., and a ProPublica/New York Times analysis shows that white students there are about four times as likely as black students to be considered gifted.

Miseducation

Is there racial inequality at your school? Look up more than 96,000 individual public and charter schools and 17,000 school districts to see how they compare.

New York City Launches Initiative to Eliminate Racial Disparities in Maternal Death

A Central Brooklyn hospital featured in ProPublica and NPR’s “Lost Mothers” series for its high hemorrhage rate will serve as a pilot for quality reforms.

DeVos Has Scuttled More Than 1,200 Civil Rights Probes Inherited From Obama

Our data analysis shows that the Trump administration is less likely than its predecessor to find wrongdoing by school districts on issues ranging from racial and sexual harassment to meeting educational needs of disabled students.

Has Your School Been Investigated for Civil Rights Violations?

For the first time ever, ProPublica is making available the status of all of the civil rights cases that have been resolved during the past three years, as well as pending investigations. See if your school district or college is being investigated for civil rights violations and why.

Have You Experienced or Witnessed Civil Rights Violations at a School? Share Your Story.

Do you know something about a civil rights investigation at a school? Have you experienced or witnessed civil rights violations? We want to hear from you.

Shutdown of Texas Schools Probe Shows Trump Administration Pullback on Civil Rights

The U.S. Department of Education was investigating why black students in Bryan, Texas, are almost four times as likely as white students to be suspended. Then Betsy DeVos took over.

How Health and Education Journalists Can Turn Privacy Laws to Their Advantage

Government records officers frequently cite privacy restrictions to deny data requests. Here are some tips on how to overcome or sidestep these barriers.

How Hospitals Are Failing Black Mothers

A ProPublica analysis shows that women who deliver at hospitals that disproportionately serve black mothers are at a higher risk of harm.

How We Measured Birth Complications

Here’s the methodology for our analysis of birth complication rates.

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