MILWAUKEE — The J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University has announced the next class of journalists joining the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism.
The fellowship teams up Marquette student journalists with reporters for nine-month investigations into complex national and local issues. This year’s cohort of fellows was selected from among more than 60 entries, the deepest applicant pool in O’Brien’s 13-year history.
The incoming fellows for the 2025-26 academic year are:
- Eddie B. Allen Jr., freelance journalist; Detroit
- Britta Lokting, independent journalist; New York City
- Miles Moffeit, investigative journalist, Dallas Morning News
- Alison Dirr, city government reporter, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Since 2013, the O’Brien Fellowship has helped journalists produce in-depth public-service journalism projects for their home news organizations or other outlets. This program was the result of an $8.3 million gift from Peter and Patricia Frechette in honor of Patricia’s parents, Marquette alumni Perry and Alicia O’Brien. In 2021, the fellowship received an additional $5 million from the Frechette Family Foundation to expand the program’s reach. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel co-founded the fellowship.
Each reporter receives $75,000, with additional stipends for research, travel and housing. This allows them the opportunity to complete in-depth journalism projects, which the fellow has proposed, that will advance justice and equity on local and national issues.
The fellowship seeks projects aimed at exposing injustice, uncovering potential solutions and igniting change. This cohort of O’Brien Fellows will focus on wrongful convictions, police misconduct, hazardous lead and discrimination against parents with disabilities.
“These four award-winning journalists are among the nation’s best,” said Jeffery Gerritt, O’Brien Fellowship director. “Their groundbreaking, multi-media projects will not only expose injustice, but also propose solutions to those problems.”
About the 2025-26 O’Brien fellows
Allen is an independent journalist, author and former newspaper reporter. Throughout his 30-year career, he has exposed dysfunctions in the criminal justice system, revealed wrongful convictions and covered national figures such as President Bill Clinton and Rosa Parks. He has written for, among others, the New York Times, Associated Press, BET, Detroit Free Press, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Detroit Metro Times and Toledo Blade.
Allen is independently producing his first biography, “Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines” as a feature film. He collaborated with the family of civil rights icon Rosa Parks for
his most recent book, “Our Auntie Rosa,” which paints an intimate portrait of the mother of the civil rights movement through their remembrances. Allen is president of the Urban Solutions Training & Development board of directors.
As an O’Brien Fellow, Allen will examine the national problem of wrongful convictions, using a new Conviction Integrity Unit in Detroit to dissect how criminal investigations can go awry and propose ways to prevent and reverse them.
Lokting is an award-winning journalist who has written and reported extensively on overlooked, rural and Western communities. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian and many other media outlets. She received Investigative Reporters and Editors’ 2022 Freelance Fellowship and was a 2023 journalism fellow for the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics.
Lokting’s magazine story, “Welcome to Lammville,” won the 2021 Religion News Association’s Story of the Year and her investigation, “Is a Jewish Fraternity Like AEPi Only for Jews?,” received third place in 2017 for RNA’s Excellence in Religion Reporting.
Lokting will use her O’Brien Fellowship to examine how certain states curtail the parental and custodial rights of people with disabilities, often for arbitrary reasons. During her fellowship, she will move from New York City to Milwaukee.
Moffeit spent 13 years as part of The Dallas Morning News investigative team. Prior to that, he wrote for The Denver Post, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Dallas Times-Herald. He is a Pulitzer Prize finalist for investigative reporting. Throughout his decades-long career, he has focused on civil rights and criminal justice issues, also writing for the Denver Post and Fort Worth Star Telegram.
In 2008, Moffeit was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for a report on how destruction of evidence in criminal cases across the nation can free the guilty and convict the innocent, prompting official efforts to correct breakdowns. He also served as a senior Ochberg Fellow with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia Journalism School. He spent more than a year uncovering flaws in the handling of domestic abuse and sexual assault cases in the military, for the series “Betrayal in the Ranks,” which was a finalist for the 2004 Dart Award.
Moffeit’s O’Brien reporting will examine the lack of accountability for police misconduct, sometimes leading to tragic results.
Dirr has covered a variety of beats in her dozen years of daily reporting in Wisconsin, including frac sand mining, police and courts, and municipal government. She currently covers Milwaukee city government for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Most recently, Dirr has reported on the implications of the local government funding law known as Act 12, the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and the U.S Presidential races.
As an O’Brien Fellow, Dirr will look at how lead poisoning affects the health and lives of Milwaukee residents, especially those living in older, poorer sections of the central city. She will examine the effectiveness of Milwaukee’s efforts to alleviate lead poisoning and abate lead paint hazards, especially for local children.
The current class of O’Brien Fellows includes independent journalists Sylvia A. Harvey, Joe Hong,
Abigail Kramer and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel education reporter Rory Linnane.
About Marquette University
Marquette University is a Catholic, Jesuit university located near the heart of downtown Milwaukee that offers a comprehensive range of majors in 11 nationally and internationally recognized colleges and schools. Through the formation of hearts and minds, Marquette prepares our 11,100 undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and professional students to lead, excel and serve as agents of positive change. And, we deliver results. Ranked in the top 20% of national universities, Marquette is recognized for its undergraduate teaching, innovation and career preparation as the sixth-best university in the country for job placement. Our focus on student success and immersive, personalized learning experiences encourages students to think critically and engage with the world around them. When students graduate with a Marquette degree, they are truly prepared and called to Be The Difference.
