Michael Braga

Professor of Practice, Texas Tech

Affiliated Department(s)

Center for Community News

BIO

2025 CCN Champion

Michael Braga is a professor of practice at Texas Tech University and a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist with nearly 30 years of experience in the business. He has reported and edited weeklies and dailies, start-ups, and 100-year-old newspapers. He has been a business journalist, investigative reporter and editor. He has worked in the United States and Latin America. Along the way, he has written or edited stories that deal with everything from real estate fraud and bank collapse to violence in mental institutions and nursing homes to bias in the criminal justice system and exploitation of prison labor. Most recently, he was an investigative reporter and editor at The Arizona Republic and before that a regional investigative editor for USA Today. Some of the investigative projects he has worked on include "Breaking the Banks," "Insane Invisible In Danger," "Bias on the bench", "Torn Apart," "Mesa Monkey Farm," The Prison Sell," and "The Bitter End." This month, Braga is launching West Texas Watchdogs, a news service powered by AI and student reporting, that will serve West Texas and the panhandle.

Bio

2025 CCN Champion

Michael Braga is a professor of practice at Texas Tech University and a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist with nearly 30 years of experience in the business. He has reported and edited weeklies and dailies, start-ups, and 100-year-old newspapers. He has been a business journalist, investigative reporter and editor. He has worked in the United States and Latin America. Along the way, he has written or edited stories that deal with everything from real estate fraud and bank collapse to violence in mental institutions and nursing homes to bias in the criminal justice system and exploitation of prison labor. Most recently, he was an investigative reporter and editor at The Arizona Republic and before that a regional investigative editor for USA Today. Some of the investigative projects he has worked on include "Breaking the Banks," "Insane Invisible In Danger," "Bias on the bench", "Torn Apart," "Mesa Monkey Farm," The Prison Sell," and "The Bitter End." This month, Braga is launching West Texas Watchdogs, a news service powered by AI and student reporting, that will serve West Texas and the panhandle.