The Markup has hired editors Ko Bragg and Ryan Tate to expand the newsroom’s focus on human-first, impact-driven reporting. 

I’m excited to work alongside both editors over the next six months as we continue to report on how people and communities are being harmed by technology—intentionally or unintentionally—and equip people with the tools, knowledge, and agency to drive change.

Ko’s investigative reporting and editing has covered everything from why Black Mississippi farmers were dying and retiring at alarming rates to how incarcerated people are almost never factored into emergency disaster planning. Ko’s work focuses on how newsrooms and organizations can truly serve communities. She has pushed the boundaries of journalism for the better, and we know she will help us do the same at The Markup. 

Ko has always been attracted to mission-driven organizations. Most recently she was the Race & Place editor for Scalawag, a nonprofit news outlet documenting oppressed communities in the South. She launched two series there—one about grief in the U.S. South and another called “Pop Justice,” on “how popular culture warps our understanding of policing and justice.”

She was previously the inaugural contributing editor at Southerly, a sensitivity reader for the Southern Environmental Law Center’s “Broken Ground,” season 5, and has reported for The Appeal and The 19th. She has also had bylines in The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, “Frontline” on PBS, Teen Vogue, Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, Columbia Journalism Review, and The Lily.

She has a bachelor’s degree in African-American history from Spelman College and a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.

Ko is based in New Orleans, La., where she enjoys eating oysters in any form, watching reality TV, and reading. She runs a popular Bookstagram account, Books on Nails, where she posts photos of her nail beds turned into portable works of art based on the covers of books she’s reading.

Ko joins The Markup on Oct. 19. 

Ryan brings 20 years of reporting and editing experience along with an incredible knowledge of the tech industry to The Markup. Ryan’s previous work ensures that the human impact of tech is clear, especially when it comes to surveillance. He has written about the use, abuse, and subversion of corporate power in the technology sector and beyond.

Most recently, he served as deputy and technology editor at The Intercept, where he oversaw reporting and partnerships relating to the archive of classified documents provided by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden and led lengthy investigations into companies like Facebook, Google, and TikTok and into surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. He has also reported on the use, abuse, and subversion of corporate power in the tech sector as a writer at Wired and Gawker.

He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was the editor-in-chief of Berkeley’s school newspaper, The Daily Californian.

Ryan is the author of “The 20% Doctrine: How Tinkering, Goofing Off, and Breaking the Rules at Work Drive Success in Business,” a book on corporate insurrection and innovation published by HarperCollins.

Ryan lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he enjoys programming Clojure, watching the films of Aki Kaurismäki, going to spin class, and relaxing in Prospect Park with his family.

Ryan joined The Markup on Oct. 5. 

The Markup couldn’t be more excited to welcome Ko and Ryan—feel free to congratulate them at @keaux_ and @ryantate, respectively.