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The Poynter Institute
By: Amaris Castillo
February 11, 2026
Veteran journalist and communicator will serve as media critic for audiences throughout the Indianapolis market in a pilot project
The Poynter Institute, a global leader for 50 years in strengthening ethical journalism and building audience trust, is proud to announce the hiring of journalist Tracey Compton as the Indianapolis Public Editor.
Compton is an experienced journalist and communications professional. Most recently, she was the senior media and communications coordinator for the global humanitarian organization Mercy Corps, where she handled many responsibilities including conducting media coverage analysis on humanitarian efforts in places of protracted conflict like Sudan, Gaza and Haiti. She is based in Indianapolis.
Compton’s position is a unique one. There are only a handful of public editors in the U.S., including Poynter’s senior vice president Kelly McBride, who serves NPR. But most tend to work for a single news organization. As the Indianapolis Public Editor, Compton will serve as a media critic, focusing on news coverage across Indiana’s capital and largest city, not just from participating newsrooms.
She will examine how Indianapolis newsrooms understand and provide coverage in line with the needs of local communities. Through a series of regular columns, she will answer questions from the audience and break down how local journalists throughout the market make decisions about their coverage. Her work will appear on the project’s partner newsrooms, which currently include WFYI public radio and TV, Mirror Indy and the Indiana Capital Chronicle. All newsrooms are welcome as partners and can join by reaching out via email to indypubliceditor@poynter.org.
The Indianapolis Public Editor is a pilot program of the Poynter Institute, with funding from the Lumina Foundation and the Hearst Foundation. Compton will work closely with McBride, who is also chair of Poynter’s Newmark Ethics Center, Nicole Slaughter Graham, editor of the Ethics Center newsletters, and Amaris Castillo, research/writing assistant. McBride herself has been the NPR Public Editor since 2020, writing regular columns that examine NPR’s journalism and help keep the network accountable to its audiences.
“Indianapolis is an exciting place for news and I’m eager to watch how a public editor enhances the great journalism in the market,” McBride said.
Compton’s first column will publish next week.
“I can think of no better time for this role than right now, when the need to understand our communities and neighbors through the stories the media tells is so important,” Compton said. “I see this work as community-building and trust-repairing.”
Compton worked as a reporter at Sound Publishing in the Pacific Northwest and at the St. Cloud Times in Minnesota. During her career she has covered breaking news, K-12 and higher education, city government and the military. Her internships include The Seattle Times, KING-5 News, The Oakland Tribune and KUOW, the Seattle-based NPR affiliate.
She is a graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle, where she earned degrees in journalism and political science.
While Compton will be building relationships with journalists and news organizations across the city, her priority will be listening to the needs of news consumers. For this gig, the loyalty is clear: It’s first and foremost with those who consume the news. The audience.
To that end, Compton and the local newsroom partners will host a meet and greet event from 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 11 at the Central Library, Riley Room, 40 E St Clair St. The event is free. Please RSVP.
Indianapolis residents with questions or comments about the local media can reach Compton at indypubliceditor@poynter.org.
About the Poynter Institute
The Poynter Institute is a global nonprofit working to address society’s most pressing issues by teaching journalists and journalism, covering the media and the complexities facing the industry, convening and community building, improving the capacity and sustainability of news organizations and fostering trust and reliability of information. The Institute is the gold standard in journalistic excellence and dedicated to the preservation and advancement of press freedom in democracies worldwide. Through Poynter, journalists, newsrooms, businesses, big tech corporations and citizens convene to find solutions that promote trust and transparency in news and stoke meaningful public discourse. The world’s top journalists and emerging media leaders rely on the Institute to learn new skills, adopt best practices, better serve audiences, scale operations and improve the quality of the universally shared information ecosystem.
The Newmark Ethics Center, the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), MediaWise and PolitiFact are all members of the Poynter organization.
Support for Poynter and our entities upholds the integrity of the free press and the U.S. First Amendment and builds public confidence in journalism and media — an essential for healthy democracies. Learn more at poynter.org.
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