The Stanford Open Policing Project: An Interview with Professor Cheryl Phillips

Abstract

Cheryl Phillips is the co-founder of the Stanford Open Policing Project, which is a cross-departmental effort to collect policing data to evaluate racial disparities within the system. She has been teaching journalism at Stanford since 2014. Phillips is also a founding member of the California Civic Data Coalition, a group that aims to make California campaign finance data accessible, and most recently, she founded Big Local News. Before coming to Stanford, Phillips worked at The Seattle Times for 12 years as both an investigative reporter and editor. She was involved in the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of a landslide that killed 43 people in 2014. She also was the sole editor in the newsroom when four police officers were shot at a coffee shop, and she was involved in coverage of the event that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009. Additionally, Phillips has twice been on teams that were Pulitzer finalists. She also served on the board of Investigative Reporters and Editors for 10 years, and she is a former board president. Phillips also worked at USA Today and newspapers in Michigan, Montana, and Texas.