Seeking Justice Through Journalism

This week’s blog is a reprint from the May ’21 issue of the USF Magazine. Former Sarlo Scholar, Lucas Waldron ’13, is another McCarthy Center alum named on USF’s 30 Under 30 list!  As a part of our Global Sarlo program, Lucas traveled to Bolivia to work on community-based sustainable development projects abroad. Read on and learn more about his incredible investigative work.

A visual investigations producer for the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica, Lucas Waldron exposes large institutions and fringe groups alike.

In 2019, his ProPublica “Documenting Hate” series, for which he gathered images, videos, and social media postings in order to identify members of a white supremacist group responsible for violence across the U.S, was named a finalist for the National Magazine Award for social media.

And, in 2019, Waldron published a piece about a teen dying in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Waldron — a politics major and film studies minor — watched hours of footage obtained via a public records request. There, he found a video of the boy dying in a manner that contradicted the official ICE report.

Read the full USF magazine article here.