Raw Story hires two award-winning investigative reporters, new night editor

Raw Story, America’s largest independently-owned political news site, has hired award-winning investigative reporters Mark Alesia and Alexandria Jacobson as it embarks on an expansion of its original journalism.

Raw Story has also hired David McAfee as night editor to manage the newsroom's expanded coverage during evenings and weekends.

"At a time when many news organizations are cutting back and laying journalists off, Raw Story is expanding our newsroom and our reporting ambitions," said Editor-in-Chief Dave Levinthal, who joined Raw Story in January. "Expect us to bring you a lot of news this year that you won't find elsewhere."

Alesia is an Indiana-based reporter who spent 16 years at the Indianapolis Star as an investigative news reporter, sports enterprise reporter and assistant sports editor. He is one of the three Indianapolis Star reporters who broke the Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics story, which revealed how Nassar serially raped and assaulted child athletes while serving as the gymnastics team's doctor. The reporting, chronicled in books and the Netflix documentary "Athlete A", won numerous awards, including the University of Missouri’s Honor Medal and the Tom Renner Award from Investigative Reporters & Editors.

His reporting on a wide variety of other subjects has won 15 national and 20 first-place state awards, including Indiana Journalist of the Year as selected by the Society of Professional Journalists. A graduate of Indiana University, Alesia most recently worked as communications director for Indiana State University. Earlier in his reporting career, Alesia worked at CBS SportsLine, the Daily Herald of suburban Chicago, the Los Angeles Daily News and Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise. He's frequently appeared on TV and radio, including CNN, ESPN and NPR.

Jacobson brings to Raw Story an extensive track record of social justice, education, consumer affairs, health care, tech and data science reporting. Her reporting has been published by numerous national outlets including ABC News, Chicago Sun-Times and The Chicago Reporter.

Jacobson's investigative work has been recognized with a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and Peter Lisagor Awards, and she recently earned first place prizes from the Chicago Journalists Association and Illinois Woman's Press Association. She earned her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and has taught journalism classes at Northwestern University and DePaul University. She's also a skilled multimedia journalist, particularly in the realm of news and documentary video reporting and editing.

McAfee comes to the Raw Story after nearly a decade of writing about the legal industry for Bloomberg Law. He is also a co-founder and a commissioning editor at Hypatia Press, a publisher that specializes in philosophical works that challenge religion or spirituality.

Raw Story's focus on original and investigative journalism in 2023 has already yielded notable results.

In recent weeks, Raw Story has exclusively revealed that: