If you haven’t yet seen it, we shared some very exciting news earlier this week: Jeff Reece has joined The Indy as our investigations editor — a newly created position that reflects a major step we want to take as a newsroom.

In addition to bolstering our day-to-day editing ranks, Jeff will be helping each of our team members bring their most ambitious projects to fruition and bring more of a “watchdog” culture into our newsroom. 

If the investigations editor role sounds a bit different than the job description we posted earlier this summer for the deputy managing editor position, it’s because it is. We had some stellar applications, but Jeff’s resume — he spent the last decade as a senior editor of a major daily, The Virginian-Pilot, including leading the paper’s investigative team — captured our imagination and reminded us of where we want this publication to go in the next few years.

“I am excited to be joining The Indy and helping the newsroom expand its watchdog journalism,” Jeff said. “It’s up to independent publications like this to hold the powerful accountable and to make the voices of overlooked communities heard.”

We’re proud of the fact-based, highly contextual, comprehensive reporting we’ve delivered since 2017. 

But we know we can do even better.

Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been encouraging our team to “level up” stories — ensuring we’re not just following the crowd and repeating what is otherwise public, but that we’re offering something new or exclusive. Going forward, we want to aim even higher, challenging our entire team to think about how their reporting can uncover things that would otherwise go untold — from the small things to the big ones that are affecting the lives and health of Nevadans. 

Our goal is not drive-by “gotcha” moments. It is groundbreaking, investigative work that comes from the place of deep connection and concern for the community that The Indy has demonstrated from its inception. 

Your time and our time is limited. So we want each story we are undertaking to be the most important, meaningful and potentially impactful story we could possibly be doing at any given moment. 

The changes are already starting to take hold. Indy reporters are placing more public records requests, taking on more daunting projects, taking advantage of more training opportunities in recent weeks. We’ve also recently added Report for America Corps Member Oona Milliken, our Southern Nevada local government accountability reporter, to the team with the goal of turning over new ground at the local level. 

So, back to Jeff. He’s spent time in Florida, Omaha, Japan and more, all of which you can read in his bio here. Drop him a welcome line at [email protected] — he’ll be making the move to Vegas in just a few weeks.

Jeff’s arrival has us newly invigorated and more singlemindedly focused on our mission, and we can’t wait to share further developments in the coming weeks that we hope will make The Indy even more of a must-read. 

Thanks for reading The Indy — we are grateful for your support as we enter this new chapter!