Mike Kessler Email and Phone Number

Reporter, writer, editor, producer, and podcast host Mike Kessler is a 2020 Sport Emmy winner and two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award.Currently, Kessler is senior investigative editor of The California Newsroom, a collaboration between KQED (S.F. Bay Area), LAist (L.A.), KCRW (L.A.), KPBS (San Diego), CapRadio (Sacramento), and CalMatters, along with NPR as the statewide newsroom's national partner. From 2019 to 2021, Kessler was Senior Editor of Investigations and Projects at the Los Angeles NPR affiliate KPCC/LAist (now LAist), where he edited or served as an advisor on a number of high-profile stories, including the eight-part investigative podcast California City (which exposed a long-running land scam and spurred legal action), the IRE- and Loeb-award-winning investigative audio and web special Stuck (which exposed one of the state’s biggest slumlords and the system that has failed to keep him in check), and the investigative audio and web special Immediate Jeopardy, a Loeb Award finalist about California’s failure to properly oversee nursing homes. Kessler is host of the podcast The Running Man, from ESPN, a 14-month investigation — launched by Kessler, who then brought it to the network and reported the story with Mark Fainaru-Wada — that triggered the arrest of, and multiple felony charges against, a former Olympian turned alleged serial sexual predator. Mainwaring was recently sentenced to 10-11 years in Massachusetts state prison. The television version of that story, also reported with ESPN, won a Sports Emmy in 2020 for Outstanding Sports Journalism; the written/web version (co-authored with Fainaru-Wada) is anthologized in Best American Sports Writing 2020, where Kessler’s work has twice appeared on the Notable list. A two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award (2008, Public Interest category; 2012 Reporting category), his work has appeared in Outside, Wired, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and Los Angeles magazine, where he was contributing writer. Kessler was a 2017 Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he studied criminal justice and wrongful convictions and served as an investigative consultant with UM Law School's Michigan Innocence Clinic. Kessler has been a staff editor at Outside, Skiing, and Denver’s 5280 magazines. He lives in Los Angeles, where he was born and raised. www dot mikekessler dot comtwitter - @mikeskessler