Lucia Walinchus is an award-winning journalist, attorney, and author. A 2016 Fulbright Berlin Scholar, she has been featured as a guest speaker on CNN and is a contracted freelancer for the New York Times. Last year, Walinchus started as the new executive director at the Ohio Center for Investigative Journalism, Eye on Ohio. She also teaches journalism at Ohio University.
Walinchus has written more than 500 articles for various publications throughout her career and has lived in eight states, including Virginia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, California, New York, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.
By investigating police practices throughout Oklahoma, she was able to write an exposé detailing how infrequently Oklahoma police fingerprint evidence, especially in rural areas, even if possession is an issue. For another story, she scoured 5,000 records to determine that Oklahoma City Landlords win 95 percent of contested case. For another story, she exposed a little-known law— still enforced in Oklahoma— that singles out full-blood Native Americans.
Walinchus has a degree in Journalism from American University and a Juris Doctor degree from California Western School of Law. She also has three data journalism certificates from the University of Texas-Austin, and often writes custom code to automate workflows, extract public records, and process large volumes of information.