A letter from our Director

August 15, 2025

Dear Reader,

We open a new chapter this fall at the Institute for Public Service Reporting.

We’re beefing up our investigative reporting with a new initiative and a new journalist who joined our staff earlier this month.



I’m honored to introduce Meghnad Bose, who comes to us with more than a decade of experience as a reporter and editor and a freshly earned master’s degree in data journalism from Columbia University.

Marc Perrusquia

Meghnad will oversee our open-source investigations — news reporting that mines data from the many highways and byways and nooks and crannies of the Internet.

He joined the University of Memphis faculty on Aug. 1 as a professor of practice in the Department of Journalism and Strategic Media, where he also oversees a newly launched master's degree program teaching open-source investigative techniques to students and working journalists.

His addition to the faculty and our staff was made possible by a $300,000 grant from the Scripps Howard Fund.

So just what is open-source investigative journalism?

Meghnad Bose

Meghnad describes it as the use of “tools and methodologies” and “cutting-edge skills and techniques of modern investigative journalism” to find data sitting out in the open for anyone who knows how and where to look.

“Our advances in technology have made large swaths of information more accessible to us than ever before, and in ever greater quantities at that, but how can we journalists inspect, interrogate and investigate the information overload in front of us to find and pursue stories of interest and importance?’’ he asks.

“…There is an incredible amount of information out there, on practically everything we seek to investigate, and so we must learn and teach one another how to best find what is hiding in plain sight.’’

That includes items like satellite imagery, video, statistics and various data tucked away in government websites, social media accounts, corporate financial filings, court actions and other digital sources.

Before joining the UofM, Meghnad was a reporter and Delacorte Fellow at Columbia Journalism Review, and an independent journalist reporting for publications such as The Intercept, Drop Site News, Documented, Hyperallergic, Votebeat, New York Focus and more.

Prior to moving to the U.S., Meghnad worked as a journalist in India where his investigations exposed questionable spending in a government-run COVID relief fund, cast light on the atrocities of organized anti-Muslim lynch mobs, and uncovered academic grade tampering involving millions of high school students.

He is a two-time recipient of the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award — considered India’s top journalism honor — and a five-time winner of the South Asian Digital Media Award conferred by the World Association of News Publishers.

Please join me in welcoming Meghnad to our staff and to our great university and city.

Marc Perrusquia

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The Institute is led by director Marc Perrusquia, who worked nearly 30 years as an investigative reporter at The Commercial Appeal. He’s the author of the 2018 book “A Spy In Canaan,’’ which exposed civil rights photographer Ernest Withers’ secret life as an FBI informant and inspired the 10-part podcast “Ernie’s Secret” and the documentary film “The Picture Taker,’’ to be released on PBS in January.

The Institute’s associate director, David Waters, worked more than 30 years at The Commercial Appeal and another four at The Washington Post. He is revered as Memphis’s best news writer and is beloved for his work exploring faith, child poverty and education

Laura Kebede-Twumasi is a Report for America corps member. She recently hosted and wrote WKNO public television’s special “History, Justice and the Journalists” on unresolved civil rights crimes in the Memphis area. She previously covered education inequities for Chalkbeat Tennessee and local government and religion for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.