Nick Bowlin is one of five journalists ProPublica has selected for its Local Reporting Network.
Bowlin is a freelance journalist who will be reporting on oil and gas in Oklahoma for The Frontier for the next year. He has previously reported on these issues in Oklahoma for ProPublica, as a part of the award-winning Unplugged project, which investigated decommissioning costs across the nation. For the past six years, Bowlin has been a contributor to High Country News from Western Colorado, where he often covered mining, land use, and post-COVID economic trends in the Mountain West.
His freelance work has appeared in Harper’s, The Guardian, The Nation, Vox, Outside Magazine, among others. His story about the battery metals mining boom was selected for the 2024 The Best American Science and Nature Writing anthology. That story was also a finalist for a 2024 Livingston Award. Before joining HCN, he worked for E&E News in Washington, D.C. and for a local paper outside of Philadelphia. He has a bachelor’s degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota.
Bowlin is part of the third group of reporters ProPublica has selected as part of the organization’s 50 State Initiative, a commitment to partnering with one newsroom from each state by 2029. Other reporters in the group include Ren Larson with The Assembly, Jena Brooker with BridgeDetroit, Christopher Osher of The Denver Gazette and Chris Bowling of the Flatwater Free Press. This group will begin their investigative projects on July 1.
ProPublica launched the Local Reporting Network at the beginning of 2018 to boost investigative journalism in local newsrooms. It has since worked with some 80 news organizations. The network is part of ProPublica’s local initiative, which includes offices in the Midwest, Northwest, South and Southwest, plus an investigative unit in partnership with The Texas Tribune.
