Benjamin Botkin

• Cover regional and state government with an accountability focus for a startup outlet in Lane County, Oregon.
• Beat coverage areas include housing, homelessness, transportation and mental health.
• Senior journalist in a 15-person newsroom. My leadership roles include organizing and preparing newsroom training sessions on public records and data reporting, mentoring early-career reporters and participating in the newsroom's workflow committee to improve the pace, planning and quality of enterprise and daily stories.
• Lead writer/editor for Willamette Watch, a weekly government/politics newsletter I developed and launched with our government reporting team. The newsletter has a 70% open rate, which exceeds the average for our outlet's newsletters.

• Covered Oregon state government and Legislature with focus on criminal justice, health and human services.
• Reported and wrote a mix of daily, watchdog and enterprise stories, including a four-part series about new drug addiction treatment programs in Oregon.
• Contributed to a national reporting project on local homeless ordinances that our parent organization States Newsroom published across our network of outlets.

• Covered mental health, health care, COVID-19 and Oregon Legislature for health care news outlet.
• Watchdog work scrutinized behavioral health system, hospital finances and children's health care.
• Stories led to state policy changes in how Oregon's Medicaid system covers children's health care.

• Covered Oregon state government, writing about issues such as human services, transportation and politics.
• Conducted training workshop about data journalism for newsroom staff.

• Covered elections, campaign finance and state government.
• Wrote about campaign and political action committee spending activities of major players, including oil and gas industry.

• Covered state government and criminal justice in Oklahoma, including courts and the state corrections system.
• Work examined health care for inmates, funding for state prisons and the state's high incarceration rate.

• Covered politics and government in Clark County, the largest municipal agency in southern Nevada with a jurisdiction that includes the Las Vegas Strip.
• Lead political reporter during the 2016 election cycle, covering state and national races, the presidential conventions and the Nevada caucuses.
• Statehouse reporter for the outlet's Carson City bureau.

Covered education in central Oregon, including K-12 school districts, a charter school and higher education.

• Covered education, local government and state politics in south-central Idaho.
• Assigned to the Idaho statehouse in Boise during legislative sessions.

• Post Register, Idaho Falls, Idaho, 2003-2005.
• Register-Mail, Galesburg, Illinois, 2005-2006.
• Rock Island (Illinois) Argus, 2006-2008.