The Markup Moves Forward

New York — August 06, 2019

• JULIA ANGWIN BACK AS EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
• NABIHA SYED APPOINTED AS PRESIDENT
• EVELYN LARRUBIA JOINS AS MANAGING EDITOR FOR INVESTIGATIONS

The Markup, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigating the effects of technology on society, will be led by Julia Angwin as editor-in-chief and Nabiha Syed as president. Both Angwin and Syed will report directly to an independent board of directors that will be established soon.

Angwin is a Pulitzer Prize winner and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist who previously worked at The Wall Street Journal and ProPublica. She founded The Markup after leaving ProPublica in 2018 with the vision of producing meaningful data-centered journalism about technology and the people affected by it.

“Technology is shaping our world faster than most people can keep up, before we can digest the implications of any of it. We believe our data-driven approach to tech accountability journalism will bring facts to this emotional debate,” Angwin said. “And I can’t think of two more accomplished leaders in their fields than Nabiha and Evelyn to join me in the venture.”

Acclaimed media lawyer Syed joins The Markup as president. Syed previously served as vice president and associate general counsel at BuzzFeed, where she led a team that successfully defended the company in high stakes litigation resulting from the publication of the Steele dossier, and initiated access litigations across the country. She is also a co-founder of the media law clinic at Yale Law School, now in its 10th year of operation.

Award-winning investigative reporter and editor Evelyn Larrubia joins them as managing editor for investigations. Larrubia brings 30 years of experience in award-winning investigative and accountability journalism, including a dozen years at the Los Angeles Times. She most recently served as executive editor at public radio’s Marketplace. She’s been honored for the data-driven investigative projects she pioneered as managing editor for news and investigations at Southern California Public Radio.

The Markup’s mission is to investigate the emerging technologies that are shaping our world. This is a crucial moment for this coverage, as our economy becomes increasingly data-driven and both corporate and government surveillance are on the rise. In alignment with its mission, The Markup makes a unique privacy promise to its readers: It will collect as little personal information about its readers as possible and will never monetize this data.

Based in New York City, The Markup is expected to begin publishing its investigative work by the end of the year. The organization includes Investigative Data Journalists Jon Keegan, Surya Mattu, Maddy Varner; Investigative Reporters Adrianne Jeffries and Lauren Kirchner; Explanatory Reporter Xavier Harding; Data Science Editor Leon Yin; Analytics Lead Michelle Bellettiere; and DevOps Engineer Simon Fondrie-Teitler. Investigative Reporter Aaron Sankin also joins as a correspondent.

The Markup remains supported by a coalition of major foundations, including Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust, the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative, and the Open Society Foundations.

Julia Angwin is an award-winning investigative reporter who has led investigative teams for the past decade at ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal. She is the author of Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance (Times Books, 2014), and Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America (Random House, 2009). Angwin has a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Columbia University.

Nabiha Syed is a media lawyer with special expertise in bold newsgathering. Described as “one of the best emerging free speech lawyers” by Forbes magazine, Nabiha Syed was most recently vice president and associate general counsel at BuzzFeed. Under her leadership, the company successfully defended against libel litigations arising out of the publication of the Steele dossier and initiated dozens of access litigations across the country. Prior to BuzzFeed, Syed co-founded the nation’s first media law clinic, currently in its tenth year of operation at Yale Law School. She holds a law degree from Yale Law School and from Balliol College, Oxford University, which she attended as a Marshall Scholar.

Evelyn Larrubia has reported, led and edited accountability journalism in newsrooms across the country for decades, in both print and audio formats. Her work has garnered more than a dozen national awards including the Livingston Award for Young Journalists and the Scripps Howard Ursula and Gilbert Farfel Prize for Investigative Reporting. She was a 2010-11 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford and was named Latina Journalist of the Year by CCNMA in 2017 for her leadership of Los Angeles’ NPR station.