ProPublica announced that Ryan Little and Kevin Uhrmacher have been hired as deputy editors on our data and news applications teams. Little will serve as one of two deputy data editors, and Uhrmacher will work as deputy news applications editor. Together, they will strengthen ProPublica’s editing capacity and streamline collaboration between our data, interactive and reporting teams.
“We’re so happy to have Ryan and Kevin joining us at ProPublica,” said Ken Schwencke, senior editor for data and news applications. “They are excellent managers and journalists, and we’re excited to bring them on to make the already-excellent journalism coming from these teams even better.”
Little joins ProPublica from The Baltimore Banner, where he served as data editor and worked on stories that won a Pulitzer Prize, a George Polk Award and an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, among other honors. Those stories included a series revealing the city’s overdose crisis, an investigation of the transit nightmare Baltimore students face to get to school, and how listless container ships like the one that collapsed the Francis Scott Key Bridge are more common than previously known. Prior to his time at the Banner, Little worked at Mother Jones as a Roy W. Howard fellow.
Little previously collaborated with ProPublica in 2022 on a rent pricing investigation that led to a Department of Justice inquiry and a settlement with Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, who agreed to stop using anti-competitive rent algorithms.
He holds a master’s degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, where he also teaches data journalism.
“ProPublica has set the standard for accountability data journalism, and I am delighted to join the team,” Little said. “I’m eager to pursue audacious, high-impact work together.”
Uhrmacher comes to ProPublica from The Washington Post, where he worked for more than 11 years, most recently as graphics assignment editor overseeing data visualization and interactive stories. Uhrmacher was a driving force behind some of the Post’s most impactful visual journalism, including doing graphics editing on work that was a part of three Pulitzer Prizes.
He launched numerous trackers, including those that followed state abortion laws and presidential appointees. He also served as a graphics editor and project manager for a database-driven story that detailed the history of enslavers in Congress, which won a Salute to Excellence Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
“I’m thrilled to be joining ProPublica’s stellar news applications team, which has been an industry leader in interactive accountability journalism, including by making consequential data more accessible to the public,” Uhrmacher said. “ProPublica’s work exposing abuses of the public trust — at a global, national and local scale — makes it a top destination for any journalist, and I’m honored that the institution has entrusted me with this role.”
