Hello! My name is
Michael Korsh.

I may look like a nice Jewish boy from Minnesota, but I'm a fierce, indefatigable journalist who uses advanced data and computer-assisted reporting skills to investigate everything from federal agencies and billion-dollar corporations to complex, shadowy real estate transactions.

Since July 2022, I’ve been an Investigative Data Reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in Pittsburgh, PA, where I served as the lead Data Reporter of With Every Breath, a Post-Gazette and ProPublica series exposing the scope of a corporate cover-up that allowed Philips Respironics to continue marketing breathing machines around the globe years after the FDA received warnings about contaminants in the machines and the company’s own experts concluded that the devices posed severe health risks to users.

The series received the George Polk Award for Medical Reporting and was named a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize in Investigative Reporting.

In addition, Left to Rot, my data-driven Post-Gazette investigative series exposing Pittsburgh's vacant and abandoned property crisis, spurred the rescuscitation of the city’s long-faltering land bank. The series was honored with a 2023 Best in Business Award in the Real Estate category, from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW).

Prior to joining the Post-Gazette, I played key roles in ProPublica’s Shadow Diplomats and The Washington Post and ICIJ’s Pandora Papers through the Medill Investigative Lab.

I deeply believe in journalism as a public service and the critical role of investigative reporting in holding powerful institutions — political, economic, and beyond — to account.

I’m not afraid of a challenge, and more than anything, I love to learn. So, while I received my BSJ and MSJ from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism (where I earned the class of 2021's Medill Valedictorian Award and graduated in 3 years), most of my computer-assisted reporting skills — from web scraping in Python to the creation of this very portfolio — are self-taught.