New merger benefits investigative reporting

All of our memberships include monthly training in investigative skills. We also offer hands-on research for specific projects. We do the research, find those documents, explore the data and then prepare a report. Then we show members our process so they will have the skills for the next in-depth story.”

Brandi Swicegood, chief editorial and programs officer, MuckRock

It hasn’t been easy for news organizations of all sizes to adapt to the recent evolution of the news industry. To ensure their sustainability, they must rely on many third-party services, from editorial to financial to advertising. To maximize their value to news organizations, these services must evolve as well.

That has been the guiding principle for Michael Morisy and Mitchell Kotler, co-founders of MuckRock, and CEO and CTO, respectively. To continue evolving, MuckRock and Sunlight Research Center merged their services in late 2025, adding to MuckRock’s portfolio of other projects and services: DocumentCloud, FOIA Machine and oTranscribe.

Michael Morisy, founder and chief executive, MuckRock

“Evolve is a very good term to use to describe our partnership with Sunlight. For many years, I’ve seen the launch of new fancy tools to help reporters. They receive great fanfare and might be good tools, but there isn’t continued investment in them. We’ve been refining and tweaking our tools for more than a decade. We know the products we build are never finished. We need to continue that refinement to serve our users today and into the future,” Morisy said.

For Brandi Swicegood, former executive director of Sunlight and now chief editorial and programs officer, the merger with MuckRock was also a natural evolution. Sunlight had been collaborating with MuckRock almost from the beginning of Sunlight. The first jointly funded project was training newsrooms to obtain deep background on political candidates ahead of the 2024 election. The project trained more than 200 journalists from approximately 90 newsrooms.

Pictured here, (l to r) Brandi Swicegood, chief editorial and programs officer; Anna Massoglia, MuckRock editor; and Seraphina Harris-Feron, MuckRock research manager, discuss the investigative reporting mindset.

“Discussions about a merger developed from that training program. Participating news leaders told us that the training was very helpful, but they lacked the capacity to undertake the deeper investigative tasks we were teaching. Some stated they were willing to pay us to perform some of those tasks,” Swicegood said.

With some 2024 funding, the Sunlight team conducted an experiment, providing hands-on research for several newsrooms. They successfully published stories with Sunlight’s help, which led to the launch of a beta program to test a membership model. A new paid membership program was launched in late January 2026, with three membership levels. More details are available at https://www.sunlightresearch.net/membership.

“All of our memberships include monthly training in investigative skills. We also offer hands-on research for specific projects. We do the research, find those documents, explore the data and then prepare a report. Then we show members our process so they will have the skills for the next in-depth story,” Swicegood said.

Tennessee Watson is the managing editor of WyoFile, a nonprofit news outlet serving the state of Wyoming.

Tennessee Watson is the managing editor of WyoFile, a nonprofit news outlet serving the state of Wyoming. She also oversees investigative and enterprise reporting. When she and her team wanted to profile a billionaire moving from California to Wyoming, they turned to Sunlight’s research desk.

“It was an in-depth profile of B. Wayne Hughes, Jr. and his wife to understand their impact and influence on the state of Wyoming. We don’t have a designated investigative team or enterprise reporter. Pairing with Sunlight was invaluable because its team did the slow, tedious work of uncovering more information about Hughes,” Watson said.

Watson said her team could have researched and written the Hughes profile without Sunlight, but then that might have limited more immediate news coverage. It was unnecessary to make that difficult choice with Sunlight’s assistance.

“One of the reasons MuckRock merged with Sunlight is to help Brandi and her team accelerate their awesome work. We wanted to make it easy for newsrooms to have a trusted partner with great solutions to their challenges without needing extensive training and onboarding,” Morisy added.

Bob Sillick has held many senior positions and served a myriad of clients during his 47 years in marketing and advertising. He has been a freelance/contract content researcher, writer, editor and manager since 2010. He can be reached at bobsillick@gmail.com.