InsideClimate News announced today that veteran investigative editor Ricardo Sandoval-Palos has joined its team as investigations and longform editor.
Sandoval-Palos has extensive experience in ushering award-winning stories from inception to publication. He comes to ICN from 100Reporters, a non-profit investigative organization where he served as managing editor. Most recently, he oversaw projects on corruption and abusive resource extraction in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the United States.
Sandoval-Palos also has served as supervising editor for Morning Edition, National Public Radio’s flagship news show. He is the outgoing board president of the Fund for Investigative Journalism. In his four years in that role, he helped double the fund’s grants budget and start investigative fellowships at Brandeis University for women and journalists of color. He has been a research consultant at Human Rights Watch, where he carried out research projects on immigration, and a project manager at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists–Center for Public Integrity. He has worked at multiple other news organizations as a reporter and editor.
“We could not be more thrilled to have Ricardo leading ICN’s investigative journalism as we enter our second decade of public service,” said David Sassoon, publisher of ICN. “Ricardo’s deep experience and talent will strengthen the impact of our reporting and advance our effort to build a permanent home for environmental journalism.”
“I’m beyond excited to be joining InsideClimate News,” Sandoval-Palos said. “Few issues today are as important as climate change, and I look forward to working with ICN’s excellent team of reporters.”
ICN has also hired Jessica Lee, a former engagement editor with The Guardian (U.S.), as its first audience engagement director. Lee has deep experience with and a passion for digital storytelling, science journalism and connecting to audiences. Before joining ICN, she was online editor at Wisconsin Public Radio. She also worked at Democracy Now! as its social media director.
“We’re delighted to now have a gifted liaison who will grow and strengthen our relationship with our readers and the public and greatly extend our reach,’’ said Stacy Feldman, ICN’s executive editor.
In May, Stacy Morford also joined the staff as its senior editor. Morford was an Associated Press national wire editor and covered state governments and environmental issues across the Midwest for over a decade. After leaving the AP, she played a major role in launching ICN as a news site. She worked for several years in international climate policy and economics communications at the World Bank and as an earth and climate science communications officer at Columbia University before returning to ICN.
“With Stacy at the helm of our growing daily reporting, ICN is better able to react quickly to the growing amount of climate and energy news,” Feldman said.
InsideClimate began as a blog in 2007 and has grown to a staff of 15, becoming one of the largest environmental newsrooms in the country. It is a non-profit, nonpartisan news organization that covers climate policy, clean energy, the fossil fuel industry and environmental science—plus the territory where law, policy and public opinion intersect.
In 2016, ICN was a finalist for the Public Service Pulitzer Prize for revealing that Exxon’s own scientists had concluded decades ago that burning fossil fuels was warming the earth, while the oil company’s leaders actively sought to discredit that truth. ICN also won the 2013 Pulitzer in National Reporting and numerous other national journalism awards.
ICN is headquartered in New York and has hubs in Washington, D.C., and Boston, but it operates as a virtual newsroom with staff based in locations from San Diego to Maine.
