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Max Blau

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  • Investigative Reporter, South Bureau, ProPublica
Atlanta
As seen in: ProPublica, Facebook, CNN, CNN International, MSN, The New York Times, Bloomberg CityLab, Business Insider, Daily Mail, HuffPost, The Guardian and
Covers:  business, news, music, health care, culture, atlanta, politics, sports, media, technology, georgia, entertainment, government, south, science
Investigative reporter with @ProPublica's South bureau, covering health care, public health, and the environment. Find me at maxblau.bsky.social/
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Max Blau’s Journalist Portfolio

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The Redemptive Love of Chiliquila Ogletree

The Redemptive Love of Chiliquila Ogletree

bittersoutherner.com — At the top of Atlanta’s Sunset Avenue, the street once home to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., you’ll find the home of U.S. Army veteran Chiliquila Ogletree. English Avenue, her neighborhood as a child, seemed full of unprecedented possibility. But the forces of poverty, crime, and drugs slowly eroded the hopes she had for her four children. Over the past two years, Ogletree allowed journalists Max Blau and Dustin Chambers into her home, where she is raising six grandchildren aged 10 and under. This is the story of her second act of parenthood.
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A 41-day fight to get treatment ends in a daughter's overdose

A 41-day fight to get treatment ends in a daughter's overdose

STAT — Taylor Wilson’s parents fought for 41 days to get their daughter treatment. They couldn’t stop another overdose.
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Exile on Peachtree Street

Exile on Peachtree Street

myajc.com — Anita Beaty's three-decade battle to serve Atlanta's homeless population her way finally draws to an end. Olympic fever swept across the city in September 1990 when it was announced Atlanta would host the 1996 Summer Games. Residents were shocked, politicians astounded, business leaders brought to tears. Four years later, that zeal had slowly faded.
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Heroin: The scarring of the next generation

Heroin: The scarring of the next generation

CNN — Heroin's shattering force hit Huntington, WV, in a span of 5 hours 28 overdoses, 2 deaths. Here is the story of the day when all hell broke loose.
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The Story of How Lean Became Hip Hop's Heroin

The Story of How Lean Became Hip Hop's Heroin

Fusion — The nation’s sizzurp problem has forced some artists, including OG Maco, to rethink their use of the drug altogether.
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Unanswered

Unanswered

Creative Loafing — Metro Atlanta police officers have fatally shot at least 75 people since 2010. In some cases the use of deadly force has been questionable. Local leaders could make reforms to prevent future shootings now. Will they?
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No Accident: Inside GM's deadly ignition switch scandal

No Accident: Inside GM's deadly ignition switch scandal

Atlanta Magazine — Marietta attorney Lance Cooper was looking for answers behind a single crash. What he found led to a recall of 30 million vehicles.
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The Sad and Beautiful World of Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous

The Sad and Beautiful World of Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous

Pitchfork — Five years after the death of Sparklehorse leader Mark Linkous, Max Blau talks with many of the idiosyncratic songwriter's closest friends and collaborators, shedding light on an artist who compelled listeners to heed the beauty of darkness.
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Owner of Mississippi's last abortion clinic won't stop fighting for her patients

Owner of Mississippi's last abortion clinic won't stop fighting for her patients

The Guardian — In 1974, one year after the US supreme court ruled in its landmark Roe v Wade decision to legalize abortions, Diane Derzis stepped into a doctor's office in Birmingham, Alabama, to terminate her pregnancy. The 20-year-old college student, who had been married, was three months pregnant and wasn't ready to have a child. So she sat in a crowded waiting room, not knowing what to expect. "You didn't have a problem with spreading your legs before, and if you can't do it now, I'm not going to see you," the doctor told Derzis. He then performed a safe and routine abortion, which cost $125.
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Doug Seegers' Nashville Skyline

Doug Seegers' Nashville Skyline

Bitter Southerner — Doug Seegers' dreams of the big time had all but faded after four decades of hard luck, homelessness and substance abuse. Then the 63-year-old songwriter found stardom in an unlikely place: Sweden. This week in The Bitter Southerner.
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Jason Molina's long dark blues

Jason Molina's long dark blues

www.chicagoreader.com — The Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. front man produced a prodigious catalog of stark and heartbreaking music. Then he disappeared.
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How Dikembe Mutombo's Finger Changed The NBA

How Dikembe Mutombo's Finger Changed The NBA

BuzzFeed — Dikembe Mutombo doesn't remember the first time he wagged his finger in a basketball game, but he does remember why. In 1992, the 7-foot-2-inch rookie center was an NBA All-Star, but he played on a bad team, the Nuggets, in a midsize city, Denver. And he was from a country, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), that most Americans can't place on a map. Sneaker companies were dishing out multimillion-dollar endorsement deals to the league's best and best-known players, and Mutombo knew he needed to establish a marketable trademark move to accompany the prodigious blocked shots for which he was already making a name.
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What Happened to Ex-Kiss Guitarist Vinnie Vincent? | Music News | Rolling Stone

What Happened to Ex-Kiss Guitarist Vinnie Vincent? | Music News | Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone — Virtuoso guitarist Vinnie Vincent brought Kiss back to musical life in the Eighties, then disappeared into a haze of legal accusations and seedy allegations. Inside a hair-metal meltdown.
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How Spotify Engineered the New Music Economy

How Spotify Engineered the New Music Economy

Mashable — This piece is part of Mashable Spotlight, which presents in-depth looks at the people, concepts and issues shaping our digital world. Steve Cooper didn't expect much from Spotify. When the New York-based band Spirit Animal released " The Black Jack White " last spring, the band's frontman didn't have high hopes about the streaming music service. He loves the platform and subscribes to it but didn't think Spotify would help his band this early in its career. But out of nowhere, Sean Parker, Napster's infamous cofounder and early Spotify investor, added the funk-rock group's single to his trendy " Hipster International" playlist.
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This Georgia hospital shows why rejecting Medicaid isn't easy.

This Georgia hospital shows why rejecting Medicaid isn't easy.

Washington Post — The Affordable Care Act was originally written such that every state would have to accept a Medicaid expansion. But the Supreme Court struck down that part of the law last year. The result is an unexpected bind for safety-net hospitals in states that are refusing Medicaid. How bad of a bind? Just look at the choices facing Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital. Grady, Georgia's largest hospital, with more than 950 beds, has long been considered the backbone of metro Atlanta's health-care system. It serves about 600,000 patients every year, trains one-quarter of Georgia's physicians and provides medical care to more uninsured patients than any other hospital in the state.
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The Fight For Wilcox County's First Integrated Prom

The Fight For Wilcox County's First Integrated Prom

BuzzFeed — Last month, black and white students from a tiny south Georgia county attended prom together for first time. Was this a big step away from the past or a small aberration in a community doomed to repeat it?
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Grady: The Past, Present, and Future

Grady: The Past, Present, and Future

clatl.com — In 2011, more than 600,000 patients visited the Grady Health System. Across the Atlanta superstructure's 16 floors and the institution's six neighborhood health centers, 5,300 doctors, nurses, and staff members do everything from refill prescriptions to resuscitate lives. With more than 950 beds, Grady is the state's largest hospital. For Fulton and DeKalb counties' uninsured residents, the safety-net facility isn't simply a mammoth infirmary — it's a lifeline. Six years ago, Grady nearly closed its doors. Although the 121-year-old hospital has experienced a recent turnaround, it's not out of the woods yet. For this three-part series, CL spoke with more than 50 doctors, patients, administrators, politicians, advocates, and others to learn about the fall, rise, and uncertain future of one of Atlanta's most important institutions.
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