When Wendi C. Thomas launched MLK50: Justice Through Journalism in 2017, she had a clear vision for what she wanted to do: journalism that explored the intersection of poverty, power and public policy in Memphis and changed lives. The 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 2018 provided obvious context for the kind of reporting Thomas knew was necessary.
“I started MLK50 because I wanted to do a kind of journalism that I knew I couldn’t do in a legacy newsroom,” Thomas said. “For maybe the first year and a half, when we were just putting it together with duct tape and hope, I was able to actually write, but as the organization grew, I just didn’t have that capacity.”
That will soon change. Seven years later, MLK50 has grown into a thriving and award-winning newsroom, with 10 employees and more than 10 national funders.
As an extension of the organization’s growth, MLK50 is switching to a shared leadership model. Adrienne Johnson Martin, MLK50’s executive editor since 2021, has been promoted to co-executive director over editorial. MLK50 is now seeking a co-executive director to lead the business operation. (Learn more about this role here.)
This allows Thomas to step back from being the sole leader of the organization and to concentrate once again on her own investigative reporting projects.
Her supporters, both here and across the country, couldn’t be more pleased.
“We’re all going to benefit from it,” said Eric Robertson of Thomas’s return to full-time reporting. Robertson led Community LIFT, which was the organization’s fiscal agent when MLK50 launched. He is executive director of the Formanek Foundation and has deep connections to advocacy work in Memphis.
“Having someone who can write in a way that connects with a reader, not only emotionally, but someone who can move people to action, is important. Having Wendi back writing at this point in Memphis … we need more people moved to action.”
Of Thomas’s journalism, Tom Jones, a local columnist, former journalist and public policy adviser, said, “She takes investigative reporting to a depth we don’t see much around here. Her focus is on impact, and she has brought that to the MLK50 organization, too. It’s impressive to watch her build a staff so that she can do what she loves, rather than managing people all the time.”
Thomas gives credit for helping figure things out in the early years to founding Managing Editor Deborah Douglas, current Visuals Editor Andrea Morales and Peggy McKenzie, a former colleague at The Commercial Appeal, who was managing editor after Douglas’ departure. But despite the support, Thomas found herself consumed with the tasks associated with running a nonprofit newsroom, especially fundraising and grant writing. “Every week, the story I’d wanted to work on got pushed off my plate because I had to do other things.”
Then in 2019, she forged a partnership with national investigative journalism heavyweight ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network and was able to pursue a story that changed everything.
The blockbuster series “Profiting from the Poor” told how Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in Memphis had sued more than 8,300 people — many of them low-income and some their own employees — over a five-year period for hospital bills they could not afford to pay.
Immediate outrage followed, and less than five weeks after publication, hospital officials announced sweeping changes that, in the end, wiped away $11.9 million in debt for more than 5,300 patients.
The work won many awards for Thomas, MLK50 and ProPublica, including the prestigious Selden Ring Award for Investigative Journalism in 2020.
“If I had to isolate one single moment that catapulted our trajectory into outer space, it would be joining the ProPublica Local Reporting Network,” Thomas says. “They just took our capacity to another level. I was still on the ground here reporting, chasing down defendants to talk to me about how they’d been sued by Methodist. I talked to literally hundreds of defendants. But I had ProPublica beside me, arguably the best investigative reporting newsroom in the country, and a great editor in Charlie Ornstein.”
“If success is the greatest revenge, Wendi is successful beyond all expectations,” said columnist Jones, who also serves on MLK50’s advisory board. “It’s incredible what she has put together.”
Thomas is actively looking for her next investigative projects, and she is sourced from the FedEx hub to the city’s emergency rooms to City Hall, though she still encourages emailed tips and story ideas. You can see the outlines of what she thinks is important in the work that MLK50 has done in the last few years.
“I keep a running list of things I’m curious about; often they are things that make me furious,” Thomas said. “I pay attention to people who repeatedly don’t act in vulnerable residents’ best interests.”
It’s a framing Thomas learned from ProPublica: “When I’m deciding what kind of project to do, I look at who is being harmed, who’s doing the harming, who has the power to make a change and what change is possible.”
That clarity of purpose is attractive to funders, many of whom have become friends and advocates.
“I especially appreciate the way MLK50 holds that the work we do as journalists is a different piece of the pie than other folks who contribute to community change, and Wendi articulates that really well,” said Alicia Bell, director of the Racial Equity in Journalism Fund at Borealis Philanthropy.
About Thomas’s coming transition back to full-time reporting, Bell said, “I think organizations work better when people can do work that they’re motivated by and where they thrive. It’s a real testament to organizational growth and development that Wendi feels confident enough in the organization to step into what she wants to do next. There’s a level of trust there. It feels like a whole new frontier for MLK50.”
This story is brought to you byMLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom focused on poverty, power and policy in Memphis. Support independent journalism by making a tax-deductible donation today. MLK50 is also supported by these generous donors.