The Marshall Project is pleased to announce the hiring of veteran reporter Doug Livingston as a staff writer for its Cleveland newsroom.
Livingston comes to The Marshall Project - Cleveland after 12 years as a reporter with the Akron Beacon Journal.
Livingston covered a spectrum of assignments at the Beacon Journal, including city government, education and his current work on the newspaper’s investigative beat.
His reporting, consistently supported with data and community engagement, has covered a range of systemic issues, including Akron’s housing and eviction crisis, Ohio’s lax charter school laws and more recently, police accountability through the creation of a database on officer discipline, citizen complaints and use-of-force investigations.
“Doug’s presence and approach to newsgathering are a great fit for our local team as we continue to expand our thinking on how we cover Cleveland and its criminal justice issues,” said Marlon A. Walker, The Marshall Project’s managing editor, local.
During Livingston’s tenure at the Beacon Journal, his work on investigative and explanatory journalism garnered multiple awards, including top honors as the state’s best staff writer by the Cleveland Press Club and the Ohio Associated Press.
Livingston also played a key role at the ABJ in pushing the news organization to center marginalized voices in the Akron community, using his engagement skills to foster trust and build relationships that were later reflected in his reporting.
“Doug has all the tools of a great journalist: an innate curiosity backed with an unrelenting work ethic and the thoughtful intelligence to get to the root of any issue,” said Phil Trexler, editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project - Cleveland.
A native of Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, Livingston took a nontraditional path to his journalism career, working in construction and shipping jobs prior to and while attending Youngstown State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism.
The Marshall Project - Cleveland launched in 2022 as the first local expansion of the national news organization, which has won several major awards — including two Pulitzer Prizes — since its founding in 2014.
The Marshall Project seeks to create and sustain a sense of national and local urgency about the inequities within the U.S. criminal justice system. The Marshall Project - Cleveland newsroom aims to expose abuses in the Cuyahoga County criminal justice system as well as systemic issues across Ohio and inside its state prison system.
Livingston, who lives in suburban Cleveland, begins his assignment at The Marshall Project - Cleveland on Dec. 11.
