Bernice Yeung Named Managing Editor of the Investigative Reporting Program

The Investigative Reporting Program at Berkeley Journalism is pleased to announce that Bernice Yeung, one of the nation’s top investigative reporters, will join its staff as managing editor in January.

Yeung, a reporter for ProPublica since 2018, will work with students and IRP staff to produce impactful long-form stories in the public interest. She brings a wealth of experience and expertise on labor, immigration, legal affairs and public policy to the IRP’s “teaching hospital” model.

In 2020, Yeung won a Polk Award for Health Reporting for her coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on meatpacking workers. Her book, “In A Day’s Work: The Fight to End Sexual Violence Against America’s Most Vulnerable Workers” exposed the prevalence of sexual violence against immigrant women and was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

“Bernice is one of the great investigative storytellers of our time, and I am over the moon to have her as a partner in our mission to inspire and train investigative reporters who at long last reflect the full diversity of the communities we cover,’’ David Barstow, the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism and head of the IRP, said.

Before joining ProPublica, Yeung reported for “Reveal” from the Center for Investigative Reporting, and wrote articles for The New York Times, San Francisco Magazine and Mother Jones. Last month, Yeung co-authored an eight-month investigation for ProPublica on food safety in the meat and poultry industry.

As a reporter with “Reveal,” Yeung collaborated with the IRP, Univision, KQED and FRONTLINE, on “Rape in the Fields,” a documentary that brought to light the violence many immigrant women face as farmworkers in America. The film was awarded the 2014 duPont-Columbia Silver Baton and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting. In 2015, Yeung was a lead reporter for the national Emmy-nominated FRONTLINE documentary “Rape on the Night Shift”, in collaboration with the same team.

In 2002 Yeung helped co-found Hyphen, a magazine created to offer more complex representation of Asian America. Today Hyphen publishes long-form features on health and legal affairs, interviews with Asian American cultural icons, pop culture analysis, and much more.

“Hiring Bernice Yeung as managing editor at the IRP reflects the School’s deep commitment to changing the face of who gets to be a journalist in this country,” Geeta Anand, dean of Berkeley Journalism, said.  “Our students benefit greatly from being mentored by journalists of color who are the absolute best in the industry to push them to excel in reporting on everything, particularly in communities long underreported on in the news.”

Yeung holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in sociology with a focus on crime and justice from Fordham University. She was also a Knight-Wallace Fellow from 2015-2016 at the University of Michigan.

Funding for this position is provided in part by Richard Logan of the Reva and David Logan Foundation. “Kudos to Geeta Anand and David Barstow – with another extraordinary and deft move, the leadership of the J-School has managed to raise its sky-high bar into the stratosphere,” commented Richard Logan, president of The Reva and David Logan Foundation. “From our point of view, the hiring of Bernice Yeung is a sign that Berkeley really understands that students need to be taught and inspired by those who have earned real world recognition through uncompromising, hard-hitting, and award-winning work. We support this committed strategy that is surely bound to have lasting positive impact for years to come.”

“I’m thrilled to join the staff of the Investigative Reporting Program at the School, which is doing inspiring work to diversify the profession and develop the next generation of investigative reporters,” says Yeung. “Joining the team at the IRP feels like a homecoming. I’ve done some of my most impactful journalism in collaboration with the IRP and I’m looking forward to producing more work that interrogates systemic failures and holds power to account.”