The Tulsa Local News Initiative has hired award-winning journalist Gary Lee to lead its soon-to-be-named newsroom serving Tulsa.

Lee launched an accomplished journalism career that took him away from home and around the globe. It all started when he saw a story about scholarship opportunities in The Oklahoma Eagle, the 10th oldest Black-owned newspaper in the U.S.

He was an avid reader of the Eagle as an adolescent, sparking his interest in journalism. He eventually moved on to write about foreign policy, environmental issues and social justice topics, and was Moscow Bureau Chief for the Washington Post.

In 2021, Lee returned home to Tulsa as Managing Editor of The Eagle, the newspaper where it all started for him. He’s since led The Eagle to numerous accolades, including top awards from the Oklahoma Press Association in 2022, 2023 and 2024.

A fifth-generation Oklahoman of Creek Freedman descent, Lee's work has garnered significant recognition throughout his career. He was twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his foreign coverage and won the Lowell Thomas Award for travel journalism for his coverage of Sept. 11.  In 2024, The National Association of Black Journalists honored Lee with the award of Journalist of Distinction, one of the organization’s top annual awards.

As managing editor of The Eagle, which has served Tulsa since just after the Tulsa Race Massacre, Lee received the Ray Lokey Memorial Award for Excellence in Reporting from the Oklahoma Newspaper Foundation, becoming the first African American and Eagle staff writer to receive the honor. Known for his investigative reporting and narrative storytelling, Lee has led several important projects including explorations of mental health challenges in Tulsa's Black community, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education, and the ongoing effects of House Bill 1775 on Oklahoma's public schools.

In his new role at the Tulsa Local News Initiative, Lee will continue to oversee publication of The Eagle, while also leading a broader newsroom serving all Tulsa communities. He’ll leverage his experience in community-centered journalism at The Eagle and his deep understanding of Tulsa's diverse communities to build a collaborative newsroom that delivers quality, independent, unbiased accountability journalism, while also being accountable to the interests and information needs of Tulsa residents.

“We’re proud to have been the springboard for Gary and to see him return home to honor the legacy and mission of our paper, which was always to serve the underserved communities of Tulsa,” said James (Jim) Osby Goodwin, whose family has owned the Eagle since 1936. Goodwin, an accomplished attorney and healthcare advocate, serves on the board of the Tulsa Local News Initiative along with his son, journalist and educator David Goodwin. “Growing The Eagle within this new nonprofit newsroom enables our family to continue supporting the fearless journalism that gives voice to the underdog and to make our communities in Tulsa stronger,” he said.

The Tulsa Local News Initiative’s new newsroom was created from input from over 300 community members in multiple languages, in which Tulsans said they wanted to see more local reporting, more and better representation of their communities and more journalism that helps people meet their basic needs.  The organization will become the publisher of The Eagle, quadrupling its staff to four journalists, and in total will hire more than a dozen reporters, editors, producers, and other editorial staff to address these needs.

As part of his vision, Lee is incorporating several innovative programs into the initiative. He has formed a community advisory committee that includes people representing a wide array of perspectives in Tulsa. The committee will grow to include more people, and will have a direct line to him and the newsroom, to provide feedback on whether it’s living up to its promise, and how it’s doing in its public service mission.

Lee’s newsroom will also be launching Tulsa Documenters, a local affiliate of the award-winning Documenters Network by City Bureau, a program that trains and pays residents to cover government meetings. It will collaborate, rather than compete, with other local newsrooms to reduce duplicative work, maximize reporting power on stories, and get more trusted journalism out to more people. The growing list of partners include Tulsa World, KOSU, the Frontier, La Semana, Focus: Black Oklahoma, KOTV and TulsaPeople.

“We’re building a robust newsroom to provide well-reported, contextual and explanatory coverage that will help Tulsans understand what's happening in their neighborhoods and local governments and to ensure everyone is equipped with the information they need to navigate daily life, get needs met and engage in their communities,” Lee said.

“We are intentional about creating a publication in which Tulsans of all walks of lives see themselves, their friends and their interests reflected on a daily basis,” he added. “We want to make news and information fun to read and easy to access.”