Stokely Baksh is an award-winning journalist based in Baltimore. She’s currently an Audience Engagement Editor at The Banner, where she develops visual and social storytelling strategies for the nonprofit newsroom and produces multimedia for social. She also co-reported on a story about hidden letters that revealed love, lust, scandal in 1920s Baltimore that earned a Best of Baltimore 2024 nod from Baltimore Magazine.
Her work spans investigative reporting, multimedia production and audience engagement. She has produced video for The Wall Street Journal and The Baltimore Sun, and has researched and reported for United Press International, the Center for Public Integrity and the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Her reporting and visual journalism have appeared on ABC World News, PBS’s Need to Know, Mother Jones, The New Republic, Colorlines and Indymedia.
Baksh was a 2010 Soros Justice Fellow and co-produced Deportation Nation, an investigative project examining the impact of the Secure Communities immigration enforcement program. She also co-produced the award-winning Business of Detention, a 2008 investigation into the private immigration detention industry that received the Melvin Mencher Award for Superior Reporting and the James A. Wechsler Memorial Award for National Reporting. The project was also recognized as a finalist for the 2009 SXSW Interactive Awards and a nominee for the 2009 Webby Awards.
Before joining The Banner, Baksh was a multimedia producer on the social team at The Baltimore Sun, where she launched and edited the visual journalism blog The Darkroom. She has also taught visual journalism as an adjunct lecturer at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.
When not working, you can find her hanging out with her kids, her husband and a rescue dog the size of a small horse. She enjoys drawing doodles and wearing platform sneakers but don’t get her started on navigating old age, she’ll talk your ear off.
