Cheryl Phillips

Cheryl Phillips is the founder and director of Stanford University’s Big Local News, a data-sharing platform and computational collaborative in support of local journalism. Recently, Big Local News partnered with The Baltimore Banner and the New York Times Investigative Reporting Fellowship to document how one generation of Black men born between 1951 and 1970 have died at higher rates of drug overdoses. This work supported investigations in 11 newsrooms and was named a Polk Award winner and received the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. In 2024, The Big Local News team was a part of two Pulitzer finalists in collaborations with other newsrooms. One BLN project is https://agendawatch.org, a platform to create news detection alerts out of local government agendas and meeting minutes. BLN also is part of a collaboration that published California police misconduct and use of force records in partnership with newsrooms and is part of a national effort to collect and publish similar records. (https://www.kqed.org/news/12050100/thousands-of-once-secret-police-records-are-now-public-heres-how-you-can-use-themberkeley%20bitds) Phillips teaches data and investigative journalism and has worked in numerous newsrooms, including The Seattle Times, USA TODAY, The Detroit News, and newsrooms in Texas and Montana. During her time in Seattle, she twice covered breaking news that received a Pulitzer Prize and twice worked on investigations that were Pulitzer finalists. Cheryl served on the board of directors for Investigative Reporters and Editors for a decade and is a former board president.