Spring 2025 Update!
We are halfway through 2025, and we’ve got some exciting updates to share with you.
Faces & Voices Award
This month, alongside Faces & Voices of Recovery, we co-presented the second Excellence in Recovery Journalism award at their America Honors Recovery Gala in Arlington, Virginia.
Venuri Siriwardane of PublicSource was honored for her 2024 two-part investigation into the availability of treatment and recovery support in the Allegheny County (Pennsylvania) Jail. Among other things, her reporting found that people who were incarcerated often had to wake up at 3 a.m. to receive treatment. This was the time that the jail system said they had the administrative capacity to do so.
In January, Venuri published a follow-up to this reporting and, as a result of her investigation, the county jail system changed its procedures and now administers its medications at 7 p.m. It is also expanding the medications and treatments that will be available. Her reporting opened the doors to recovery for hundreds of people in Allegheny County and laid out important questions for other reporters understanding treatment in carceral settings.
Venuri is the public health reporter for PublicSource in Pittsburgh. Her reporting focuses on the health and wellbeing of the region's most vulnerable populations, and how local government and the region’s health systems impact their lives. We appreciate Faces and Voices of Recovery including us in this process and elevating the importance of reporting on shaping policy and public perception of drug use and addiction.
Expert Database Update
We’ve improved the expert database for journalists to be easier to navigate and included up-to-date information. We also started yearly updates in our database for experts. If you’re a member of our expert database, keep an eye out for our email to make sure your information is accurate and reach out if you need anything changed!
New team members!
We are happy to announce that Jessica Riley has joined Reporting on Addiction as a summer intern. Jessica is a student at West Virginia University and will assist in our work to expand opioid settlement fund coverage resources and training. Alli Cropsey is a medical student at Michigan State University and will be working to build out our research capacity. Welcome, Jessica and Alli!
Open Society Foundations grant
Earlier in the year, we received a grant from Open Society Foundations (OSF) to expand our opioid settlement reporting resources. This work will benefit our full audience in addition to focusing on specialized resources for journalists in four states: Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey and New York.
With these funds, we will be hosting additional training on how to cover opioid settlement distribution and will be expanding our other resources (e.g., styleguides, toolkits) that help support reporters covering these complex topics. We held our first webinar focused on FOIA last month (more info below!)
We are extremely thankful to OSF! This grant will allow us to better support journalists covering this spending in their communities. There’s lots of great reporting happening and we’re happy to be a small part of getting this information out there.
MuckRock FOIA fireside chat
In case you missed it, we hosted a fireside chat with Dillon Bergin, of MuckRock, about using FOIA to bolster opioid settlement fund reporting. We talked about how to use their tool to unlock spending decision to facilitate reporting. It was great to be joined by 50 participants! The conversation has been uploaded to YouTube. Watch it here! If you have questions about this tool or where to get started, we’re here to help.
Rachel Molenda
Last Chance: Join our 2025 Summer Journalism Educator Cohort!
If you are teaching in a journalism program or the advisor of a student-led newsroom at a college or university anywhere in the U.S. or Canada, it’s not too late to join our 2025 Journalism Educator Cohort!
Our FREE train-the-trainer style webinar series for journalism educators is intended to help you teach the latest in evidence-based addiction science and medicine to journalism students. It will prepare you to discuss addiction stigma with your students, recognize problematic reporting and present them with helpful resources to improve ethical coverage of drug use and addiction in your community.
Whether you’re interested in focusing an entire reporting class around the topic, integrating our strategies and resources into an already existing course or advising a student-led newsroom, you’ll leave this training with materials you can implement in your classroom or newsroom today.
Summer 2025 Schedule:
Session 1: Tuesday, June 24 2:00-3:30 p.m.
Session 2: Wednesday, June 25 10:30a-12:00 p.m.
Session 3: Thursday, June 26 2:00-3:30 p.m.
Session 4: Tuesday, July 1 2:00-3:30 p.m.
Session 5: Tuesday, June 8 2:00-3:00 p.m.
We ask that participating educators commit to attending at least four of the five sessions live.
Don’t miss this final chance to join us this summer! Register for our free sessions now!
New resource
Over the last six months, we have developed a new journalist focused resource covering alcohol use disorder – and we want to make sure you haven’t missed it!
During Alcohol Awareness Month (April), we launched resources to help journalists better understand alcohol use, misuse, and use disorder. Our goal is to help journalists understand key aspects of alcohol related prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery, so that they can report on alcohol issues more accurately and empathetically. These changes in reporting can directly benefit your communities by helping to:
- Reduce the stigma associated with alcohol use disorder.
- Make the public more aware of available help and support services.
- Foster more productive community discussions and effective policies regarding alcohol.
- Ultimately improve overall community health and well-being.
Jonathan JK Stoltman
Thanks so much to everyone for a great start to the year. We can’t wait to share more with you throughout the year.
