Center for Investigative Reporting Announces Partnership With The Bell Project

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August 3, 2026

Center for Investigative Reporting Announces Partnership With The Bell Project

The Center for Investigative Reporting—which produces Mother Jones, Reveal, and More To The Story—announced it will serve as a fiscal sponsor for a newly launched organization called The Bell Project, which is creating the nation’s first archive of torture allegations involving law enforcement and corrections officers. The agreement is the latest in CIR’s history of providing mission-oriented news outlets and organizations with administrative support so they may focus on their core work.

“We are thrilled to expand our collaboration with Nate Rosenfield and Brian Howey,” said Monika Bauerlein, CIR’s CEO. ”The tenacity and commitment they bring to their investigative reporting will serve them well in building The Bell Project.” 

Under the agreement, CIR will provide a range of accounting and business management services critical to helping the organization secure its nonprofit status. The arrangement will allow Bell Project co-founders Nate Rosenfield and Brian Howey to:

  • Produce investigative reporting that elevates survivors’ voices, informs the public, and identifies the conditions that allow police torture to occur. 
  • Host town halls and listening sessions to facilitate dialogue with affected communities.
  • Develop training programs to help community members document allegations of torture and preserve evidence.
  • Train local reporters to use The Bell Project’s archive and investigative methods to uncover and address other law enforcement abuse.

“Torture by law enforcement is not only a moral failure—it is a practical and institutional one,” Rosenfield said. “By drawing upon CIR’s administrative expertise, The Bell Project can boost public understanding of the problem and, through research and education, ultimately prevent it.” 

The Bell Project draws its name from a Black Arkansas man known only as “Bell,” who fought successfully to overturn his death sentence in 1929 after a prison guard tortured him into a false murder confession. It has received a $218,000 grant from the Reva and David Logan Foundation and a $40,000 grant from Northwestern University’s Medill Data-Driven Reporting Project.

Rosenfield and Howey were honored as Pulitzer Prize finalists in 2024 for their investigation about a group of rogue sheriff’s deputies in Mississippi who tortured residents for a generation. Reveal collaborated with them in 2025 on a two-part series based on their reporting. (Listen here to episode 1 and episode 2.) In addition, Reveal aired an investigation from Howey in 2023 that exposed how law enforcement officials were failing to notify people when they shot and killed their relatives; the episode won a duPont-Columbia Award and George Polk Award.

CIR previously served as a fiscal sponsor for the G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism, We the People, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Climate Access, Radio Ambulante, Pop-Up Magazine, and Hyphen magazine.