Trace Talk: Lessons from 10 Years of Gun Violence Data

Link to Zoom event: https://www.eventbrite.com/x/trace-talk-lessons-from-10-years-of-gun-violence-data-tickets-1194489051909

As the only news organization focused on gun violence, The Trace has covered every dimension of the crisis. But we’re always learning new things about the issue. Join us as Trace journalists Chip Brownlee, Mensah M. Dean, Olga Pierce, and Samantha Storey share the insights they gained from analyzing a decade’s worth of shootings.

Event Details:

Date: February 12, 2025
Time: 12:30 pm EST / 9:30 am PST
Location: Zoom

Read about our moderator and panelists:

Samantha Storey, Managing Editor

In addition to maintaining The Trace’s story pipeline as managing editor, Samantha also oversees the newsroom’s work with data. Samantha spent more than half of her career at The New York Times, where she worked as an assignment editor across several desks; she served as the lead audio reporter on “An Imam In America,” which won a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Prior to The Trace, she worked as an executive producer and podcast host at Bloomberg, where she won a Gerald Loeb Award in audio for “In Trust” and received a Webby award nomination for “Bedrock, USA.” She also spent more than five years as a senior enterprise editor at HuffPost, where she oversaw reporting on social inequality, and led investigations into hate crimes, domestic violence, and school policing. Samantha’s first job in journalism was at the Seattle Weekly; she was one of the first editors to help put out the paper on the Internet. Samantha holds a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Boston College.

Chip Brownlee, Reporter

Chip is a reporter at The Trace covering federal policy related to violence prevention and firearms. He is also the author of The Trajectory newsletter, which spotlights the people, policies, and programs grappling with America’s gun violence crisis. Before joining The Trace as an investigative fellow in June 2020, Chip worked as a reporter and the editor-in-chief of his collegiate newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman. He also covered the state legislature, governor, courts, and elections for the Alabama Political Reporter. As an undergraduate, Chip studied political science and journalism at Auburn University. He also earned an M.A. with a concentration in politics from the Columbia Journalism School.

Mensah M. Dean, Staff Writer, Philadelphia

Before joining The Trace, Mensah was a staff writer on the Justice & Injustice team at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he focused on gun violence, corruption and wrongdoing in the public and private sectors for five years. Mensah also covered criminal courts, public schools and city government for the Philadelphia Daily News, the Inquirer's sister publication. A native of Washington, D.C., Mensah began his career at The Washington Times. His freelance work has appeared in People and Vibe magazines. In 2022, Mensah was part of a team of Inquirer reporters who were Pulitzer Prize finalists for explanatory reporting for their yearlong chronicling of the impact of gun violence on Philadelphia. In 2019, he was named print journalist of the year by the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. In 2017 he received the Vernon Jarrett Medal for Journalistic Excellence and a $10,000 prize from Morgan State University's School of Global Journalism and Communication for writing a series of articles about a man who, at the time, had spent 37 years in solitary confinement. He graduated from Bowie State University in Maryland.

Olga Pierce, Data Editor

Olga is data editor and a reporter at The Trace. Previously, she was an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska and deputy data editor at ProPublica. She has written award-winning stories about unemployment insurance, legislative redistricting, the foreclosure crisis, and patient harm in hospitals. She graduated with an M.S. in journalism from Columbia University in 2008. Her main data analysis tools are R and SQL, and she dotes on her three cats.