Seth Freed Wessler is currently an investigative reporter with ProPublica covering immigration, racial justice, and the criminal justice system. He was previously a reporting fellow at Type Investigations and he has reported for The New York Times, This American Life, Reveal, Mother Jones, Smithsonian and The Nation. Wessler’s 2020 story on life inside a federal immigration facility in Georgia during the COVID-19 pandemic won a Sidney Award and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. His documentary film, The Facility (Field of Vision, 2021) is a real-time chronicle of the same detention center. Wessler’s investigation into neglect in the U.S. Marshals Service’s detention system was a finalist for the National Magazine Award for reporting and won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Magazine Investigative Reporting and the Deadline Club Award for Investigative Audio Reporting. He shared a Peabody Award for an investigation into public spending on Confederate memorials. The project also won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and an Online Journalism Award. His work has been honored by investigative awards from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, the John Bartlow Martin Award, the John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting and a Hillman Prize. Wessler is a founder of the Gumshoe Group, an initiative to support freelance journalists and is a lecturer at CUNY’s Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
