KARA NEWHOUSE
DATA-DRIVEN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST
CONTACT
Karanewhouse.com &
github.com/karanewh
EDUCATION
Master of Journalism
University of Maryland
Outstanding Master’s Student award
B.A. in Anthropology
American University
Graduated summa cum laude and
with university honors
SKILLS
▪ Data wrangling and analysis: R,
Python, Excel, Tabula
▪ Data acquisition: Web scraping,
public records requests and
negotiation
▪ Collaboration: Git version
control, GitHub, project
management
▪ Data visualization and design:
Adobe Illustrator, Flourish,
Datawrapper, HTML/CSS, Chart.js,
Adobe After Effects, Adobe
Premiere Pro
▪ Language: Spanish (basic)
What I Do
I use data to find and tell stories about systemic inequities.
▪ I found that federal data often overstates girls’ athletic participation in high school sports. My story
ran on the front page of the Baltimore Sun, and I produced accompanying data visualizations.
▪ I used the Library of Congress API to scrape data from more than 150,000 newspapers and connect it
to historians’ datasets of lynching victims. This helped to programmatically identify problematic
newspaper coverage of Jim Crow-era lynchings.
▪ I co-led a team of seven reporters in cleaning, wrangling and analyzing state health department data
for an investigation of worker safety during COVID-19. I both wrote code and assisted team members
in transforming data findings into language that readers could digest.
▪ As a lead writer on an investigation of public housing evictions, I blended data findings with
reporting from a dozen journalists covering five cities to craft a cohesive narrative.
I use computational techniques to solve reporting problems.
▪ I developed an interactive database that allows reporters at a large daily newspaper to query five
years of state education data across more than 100 variables and generate reporting leads.
▪ I created a bot that distributes daily Slack alerts about new or updated federal court cases involving
school districts.
▪ I scraped an Office for Civil Rights database for cases related to Title IX and high school athletics and
used the scraped information to set up a systematic case review that led reporters to key stories.
▪ I am a member of AP’s automated web scraping team for making state and national election calls.
I am rooted in on-the-ground reporting.
▪ As a local education reporter in Pennsylvania, I covered 17 public school districts and earned
Pennsylvania’s highest newspaper journalism honor.
▪ I uncovered financial mismanagement and persistent Sunshine Act violations in a wealthy school
district, prompting mass civic participation and changes to school district operations.
▪ For KQED MindShift, I have done deep dives into how teachers adapted to virtual learning, the
social-emotional effects of the coronavirus pandemic on classrooms.
▪ I began my career by reporting on protest movements in Honduras and the occupied West Bank.
I love sharing and spreading journalistic innovation and best practices.
▪ I established a system to coordinate multiple large-scale public records campaigns for the Howard
Center for Investigative Journalism. In one campaign, I coached 40 undergraduates from initial
requests through extensive follow-up.
▪ I have taught multimedia storytelling skills to international scholarship students at U.S. community
colleges, high school students at low-income schools in India, refugee teens in the West Bank and
adults living with mental illness in Pennsylvania.
AWARDS
Punch Sulzberger Innovator of the
Year (Howard Center team)
News Leaders Association, 2022
IRE Medal & Student, Large Award
(Howard Center team)
IRE, 2022
Best of Show for Writing & 1st Place,
General News
Pennsylvania Associated Press
Managing Editors, 2017
1st Place, General News
Pennsylvania Women’s Press
Association, 2017
Dew Award for Journalistic Service
Pennsylvania NewsMedia
Association, 2016
Truth in Finances Award
Pennsylvania Institute of Certified
Public Accountants, 2016
References
Sean Mussenden | Data Editor,
Howard Center for Investigative
Journalism
University of Maryland
smussend@umd.edu
Derek Willis | Lecturer in Data and
Computational Journalism
University of Maryland
dpwillis@umd.edu
Ki Sung | Senior Editor
KQED MindShift
ksung@kqed.org
Tom Murse | Executive Editor
LNP Media Group
tmurse@LNPnews.com
Work History
● Associated Press, Web Scraping Team Member
Contractor | 2021 - present
Assist with web scraping of votes totals to enable state and national election calls.
● KQED MindShift, Education Reporter
Contractor | 2020 - present
Cover the impact of COVID-19 on students and teachers for MindShift web vertical.
● Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, Reporting Fellow
College Park, Maryland | 2020 - 2022
Used computational reporting techniques to acquire, clean and analyze complex datasets and
uncover systemic issues such as worker safety, gender equity in high school sports and
white-owned newspapers’ role in fostering racial terror. Pursued and managed local, state and
federal public records requests for multiple investigations.
● LNP Media Group, Education Reporter
Lancaster, PA | 2013 - 2017
Covered 17 public school districts for a newspaper with 75,000+ circulation.
● Faces of Mental Health Recovery, Teaching Artist & Producer
Pennsylvania | 2013 & 2014
● Staff Reporter, Perry County Times
New Bloomfield, PA | 2012 - 2013
● Freelance Reporter
U.S. & Abroad | 2009 - 2012
Work Samples
Federal Title IX data on sports participation is unreliable
April 11, 2022 for The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism and the Howard Center for
Investigative Journalism; also Page One, Baltimore Sun, May 2, 2022
● Data wrangling and analysis with R, public records reporting, traditional reporting, writing,
graphics with Adobe Illustrator
Printing Hate App/Database
Dec. 20, 2021 for The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
● Web scraping with Python, data wrangling and cleaning with R
Walmart sales soared, essential workers got scant protection
May 12, 2021 for The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
● Data analysis with R, publics records reporting, project management
Why Helping Grieving Students Heal Matters So Much
March 16, 2021 for KQED MindShift
● Feature reporting and writing, cultivating sources, education beat reporting
Leaked audio: Manheim Township school board conspired to deliberate privately
on superintendent search
Feb. 4, 2016 for LNP/LancasterOnline
● Accountability reporting, public records reporting, education beat reporting