🏆🏆🏆 Investigative Reporting Program: Winners of the 2023 & 2025 Polk Awards and the 2025 DuPont Award!
We are committed to producing stories that expose injustice and abuse of power while training the next generation of journalists in the highest standards of our craft.
The Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism is a nonprofit newsroom and teaching institute led by four-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Barstow.
Through the IRP, Berkeley Journalism students gain real-world experience under expert guidance. Our professional staff of practicing investigative reporters and editors advise students as they conceive and execute on ambitious reporting projects. This student-centered approach has resulted in high-impact investigations for media outlets such as the Washington Post, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, The New York Times and PBS Frontline. Read our most recent stories here.
We are proud to be part of Berkeley Journalism’s efforts to expand who is given the opportunity to become a reporter. For the IRP, this means we are dedicated to making investigative reporting accessible to all Berkeley Journalism students as we actively work to diversify the profession.
Read Our Stories
Meet Our People
Bernice Yeung
Managing Director/Managing Editor
Christine Schiavo
Local News Editor
Garrett Therolf
Senior Reporter & Contributing Editor
Gisela PĂ©rez de Acha
Reporter
Kathryn Hurd
Reporter
Kate RaphaelÂ
Reporter
Sasha Schell
Reporter
Lisa Pickoff-White
Director of Research, California Reporting Project
Katey Rusch
Record Requests Manager and Data Journalist
Yasmin Rafiei
Reporter in Residence
Aysha Pettigrew
Director of Operations
Lowell Bergman
Founder
Student Reporters
Lili Cortes ('25)
Elizabeth Santos ('25)
Julian Wray ('25)
Our Partners
Our Funders
We receive major support from these foundations
The IRP was founded with a gift from Reva and David Logan, which created an endowed faculty position, the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism. The IRP offices are sponsored by a generous gift from the Heising-Simons Foundation to the University of California, which allowed the university to purchase a building for the IRP and The Daily Californian.
Individual donors also provide major program support and have long been the base of our funding.
If you are interested in supporting the IRP, donations can be given to specific programs or general operations.
The Logan Symposium brings together a Who’s Who of top investigative journalists to address the critical issues confronting the field. The event also convenes newsroom leaders, as well as media attorneys, academics, major foundations and philanthropists who support journalism in the public interest. Hosted by Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program since 2007, this intimate gathering is held in honor of Reva and David Logan, whose generosity helped establish the IRP. The Logan Symposium is an invitation-only event. If you'd like to attend, please reach out to the Investigative Reporting Program directly.
Open Source Investigations
The Investigative Reporting Program has partnered with Berkeley Law's Human Rights Center to develop and pilot the nation’s first open source investigative reporting class at a university. We've been refining, experimenting and mastering how to teach what has never been taught – the art and science of integrating cutting-edge OSINT techniques into traditional shoe-leather investigative reporting for all mediums.
Contact Us
Investigative Reporting Program
Graduate School of Journalism
2481 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94709
Phone: (510) 643-1386
Email: ucberkeleyirp@berkeley.edu