We’re pleased to announce that three skilled and award-winning journalists have joined our newsroom this month.
Josiah Bates enters as The Trace’s reporter dedicated to the Great Lakes region, covering gun violence in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
“Josiah has the oft-touted but really quite rare ability to connect with people from all kinds of backgrounds,” said senior editor Selin Thomas, who will work closely with Bates. “His reporting is rooted in the humanity of others, especially when it comes to gun violence.”
Bates comes to The Trace after reporting on criminal justice at TheGrio and TIME magazine, where he carved out a gun violence beat of his own volition and parlayed it — in his spare time — into a searing book, “In These Streets: Reporting from the Front Lines of Inner-City Gun Violence,” published in May 2024. His hiring will help us bring consistent accountability and community-centric reporting to places often undercovered or dismissed in the national conversation about gun violence.
As editor of the Gun Violence Data Hub, George LeVines will lead, manage, and grow the Data Hub, a resource that will help local newsrooms around the country cover gun violence. LeVines most recently worked at The Los Angeles Times, where he helped lead a data and graphics team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for its coverage of the 2023 Lunar New Year shooting in Monterey Park, California. He previously worked with several NPR member stations in California, winning a national Edward R. Murrow Award for work holding the U.S. Forest Service accountable for its failures in tracking and executing wildfire prevention measures, and with CQ Roll Call in Washington, D.C. LeVines is already moving the Data Hub forward in its mission to make gun violence data more accessible to local newsrooms around the country.
Aaron Mendelson joins the team as a news developer after covering voting and elections as an investigative reporter at the Center for Public Integrity. Before that, he worked on data and investigative projects at Los Angeles NPR affiliate KPCC/LAist. Mendelson’s reporting has garnered honors including a Gerald Loeb Award, Online Journalism Awards, and an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award. Mendelson, too, is already hard at work researching, reporting, and developing interactive visualizations, data projects, and data collection efforts for the Gun Violence Data Hub.
“George and Aaron have hit the ground running,” said Samantha Storey, the Trace’s managing editor. “Already they’re keeping many moving parts on track, and getting things done at a high standard. The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub is so fortunate to have them.”
