I’m Tyler Dukes, and I’m a 2017 fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. In real life, I’m an investigative reporter for the state politics team at WRAL News in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I work on longform stories and specialize in data and public records. I’m really interested in finding ways to use technology to enhance in-depth reporting and make data journalism more accessible to underserved media markets. That means (I think) developing better methods for training working journalists and educating journalism students in ways that allow them apply these skills practically on the beat.
At WRAL, I’ve led the reporting on deep dives into the state’s mental healthcare system, deaths in the prisons and, oddly enough, the search for sunken treasure off the Carolina coast. I also built systems that allow readers to search more than a million pages of records from a major university athletic scandal and explore the campaign cash fueling each state lawmaker’s election bid. Prior to working at WRAL, I managed a research project at Duke University’s DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy called the Reporters’ Lab, aimed at finding ways to reduce the cost of investigative reporting. I also freelanced as a science and technology reporter for several newspapers and worked as an adviser to North Carolina State University’s (then-)daily student newspaper.
While my background is in reporting, writing, editing etc., I’m also proficient in Python, JavaScript and HTML/CSS (although far, far, far from being an expert). I’m also really good at prying records from the clutches of government officials.
I’m a native North Carolinian, devotee of Eastern-NC barbecue and fan of gas station coffee. I love all dogs and very few cats.