MindSite News, a nonprofit digital news publication that reports on mental health, has hired investigative reporter Josh McGhee to cover the intersection of criminal justice and mental health.
MindSite News launched in September 2021 as the only news site focused solely on mental health reporting. Its writers and editors are veteran journalists who have written for dozens of publications and won numerous awards.
“We are thrilled to bring Josh McGhee on board to cover the mental health and criminal justice systems,” said Rob Waters, founding editor of MindSite News. “He will apply his experience in data reporting to dig into the ways these systems are failing people whose principal crime is having a mental illness.”
In addition to investigative and enterprise stories, McGhee will write a regular newsletter and help MindSite News deepen collaborations with USA Today, Solutions Journalism Network, Yahoo News and other outlets.
McGhee grew up in Chicago’s Tinley Park and has worked at the Chicago Reporter, DNAinfo and Injustice Watch, writing data-driven stories on courts, policing, public defense and discriminatory sentencing. He is secretary of the Chicago chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists and a Peter Lisagor Award winner for Best Feature Series in 2016. He also served as writer and producer of “Exodus,” a series on Black migration to and from Chicago.
MindSite News covers America’s mental health crisis – exposing problems, combating disinformation, and highlighting solutions – and is a key source of mental health information for policymakers, researchers, providers and mental health advocates. It was conceived by Waters, a veteran journalist, and cofounded by science journalist Diana Hembree and Tom Insel, psychiatrist, former director of the National Institute for Mental Health, and author of Healing: Our Path from Mental Illness to Mental Health.
MindSite News is supported by the Sozosei Foundation, the California Health Care Foundation, the 4 AM Fund and generous individual donors.
You can follow MindSite News by subscribing to its daily newsletters, visiting its website or on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram.
