Economic development

Arabella Saunders

Arabella Saunders covers economic development for New York Focus. Prior to joining the newsroom, Saunders’ freelance work appeared in VICE, HuffPost, DCReport.org, The Assembly NC and more. Her journalism career began in high school, where she served as editor-in-chief of the school’s newsmagazine. In 2018, she was a runner up for the National High School Journalist of the Year. In college, she worked for The Daily Tar Heel and also as a freelancer. She covered topics that ranged from Snapchat porn scams to the undercounting of COVID-19 deaths in North Carolina prisons. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and media as well as English and comparative literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A fun fact about her is that she has a Joan Didion-inspired tattoo.

New York Focus

New York Focus unmasks power in the Empire State. As the only nonprofit publication with an emphasis on state-level coverage, we produce deeply reported, investigative stories on the systems, decisions and actors that affect communities throughout New York. While most local accountability coverage is directed at New York City, we keep an eye on Albany — the notoriously corrupt and quietly impactful center of power throughout the state.

Sam Ogozalek

Sam Ogozalek reports for The Island Packet in Hilton Head, South Carolina. He covers economic development in Jasper County, South Carolina, which is seeing burgeoning growth as new residents, many of them retirees from out of state, settle in this historically African-American area. Ogozalek covered cops, courts and local government during internships at the Tampa Bay Times, The Buffalo News, and the Naples Daily News. An investigative reporter who is adroit at FOIA and other document requests, Ogozalek uncovered conflicts of interest while as an intern in Naples on a design review board in a nearby town that led to a proposed new ethics ordinance. He recently assisted with FOIA research at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. He was the 2018-19 editor-in-chief of Syracuse University’s independent student newspaper, The Daily Orange. Ogozalek grew up in Hancock, New York, a small town along the Delaware River.