COLLEGE PARK — The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism has hired two new data journalists to its team, alums and former Howard fellows Kara Newhouse and Aidan Hughes, Interim Director Sean Mussenden announced Wednesday.
Newhouse will serve as deputy data editor and Hughes will serve as a data journalist.
Both will work closely with students on the Howard Center’s data-driven investigative journalism projects. They will also be integral to the center’s new DataHub initiative, which is designed to extend the impact of Howard Center investigations by helping journalists, researchers and members of the public make use of extensive data sets and documents collected by the center. Newhouse and Hughes will help maintain the DataHub's data sets and document collections, and will develop training materials to support their use by other news organizations.
"Kara and Aidan are exactly the kind of journalists we want mentoring early career investigative reporters in the Howard Center and working with newsroom partners to make use of our data and documents,” Mussenden said. “Both are skilled data journalists with strong reporting chops who, as Howard fellows, demonstrated real teaching ability."
Newhouse, a 2022 Merrill College master’s graduate, has 15 years of journalism and storytelling experience. Most recently, she was an investigative data reporter at a news startup in Florida, where she reported on immigration enforcement and powerful real estate developers. Prior to that, she worked as a reporter, podcast producer and editor at KQED.
As a Merrill College student and Howard fellow, Newhouse was a data team leader and lead writer on multiple investigations. While working at LNP/LancasterOnline, her hometown paper in Pennsylvania, her investigation of a wealthy school district led to board member resignations, a more transparent superintendent search and the restoration of elementary art and music classes. It also won multiple state journalism awards.
Newhouse has covered civil resistance movements abroad and taught digital storytelling in multiple countries. She is the author of “The Story of Everything: The Story of You!,” a children’s book about deep time.
Hughes, a 2025 Merrill College master’s graduate, helped lead a variety of investigative and data projects including an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award-winning series on privately sponsored travel for members of Congress. He also spent much of 2025 leading the Howard Center’s experimentation with large language models and other forms of generative artificial intelligence to develop new investigative reporting methods.
Hughes previously reported on Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration as a Roy W. Howard fellow. Before coming to Merrill, Hughes worked in data privacy at a health care data and analytics company.
In addition to his master’s degree from the University of Maryland, he earned a master’s in Conflict Transformation & Social Justice from Queen's University Belfast and a bachelor’s in International Studies and Creative Writing from Virginia Tech.
For more information, contact:
Josh Land, Communications Manager
joshland@umd.edu