2019-2020

Julia Fair

Julia has been a government watchdog reporter at The News Leader in Staunton, Virginia. Before that, she had internships with USA TODAY, the Kenosha News in Wisconsin, and the Rappahannock News in Virginia. She has won several awards including Virginia Press Honors for in-depth and investigative reporting. She’s a graduate of the Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Government watchdog reporting in Northern Kentucky Julia lives and works out of Northern Kentucky, watchdogging and explaining the efforts of the three major county governments, the major cities, and the state legislative efforts that are unique to Northern Kentucky. Among the topics of high concern to the Enquirer’s Northern Kentucky audience: growth, poverty, taxes and the upcoming 2019 gubernatorial election. In particular, she covers what local elected leaders are spending money on, what development projects they’re approving, the Frankfort delegation and how local schools are performing.

Eric Shelton

Eric Shelton is a photojournalist whose work has been published in the Boston Globe, LA Times, New York Times, USA Today, and Washington Post. He first left his home state of Mississippi to intern with the Associated Press in Boston. He worked across Texas and Mississippi as a photojournalist for Texarkana Gazette and the Natchez Democrat, a multimedia journalist for the Abilene Reporter-News, and digital reporter and chief photographer for the Hattiesburg American. He then worked as photo editor of the Killeen Daily Herald, managing photo and video for five publications. Eric has won awards from the Mississippi Associated Press Managing Editors and the Arkansas Press Photographers Association. He returned to Mississippi to become the first photojournalist at Mississippi Today. He continues with us for a second year.

Eric Schmid

Eric Schmid has interned for Fox News Channel, AccuWeather as a Dow Jones News Fund Digital Media Intern and WSHU Public Radio. He covered governments in Nassau and Suffolk counties, environmental issues and other general assignments as a News Fellow at WSHU’s Long Island News Bureau. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Stony Brook University last May as one of the journalism school co-valedictorians. Community reporting in the Metro East area in Illinois Eric covers the Metro East area in Illinois and is developing insights and knowledge about issues specific to the area, including economics, education and politics. He produces radio reports, web features and multimedia reports specific to Metro East issues and news. For example, while St. Louis Public Radio has developed a strong reputation for providing important information about ballot issues in Missouri, it has never been able to develop a similar depth of coverage and knowledge for our Illinois constituents. St. Louis Public Radio is providing training about news, production and relevant issues Eric might find himself covering.

Eve Zuckoff

Eve was a producer for Radio Boston at WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station, where she produced daily segments and reported from the field on arts, culture, crime, justice, technology, business, politics and the environment. She interned and was a production assistant on the award-winning investigative podcast “Last Seen,” from WBUR and The Boston Globe, about the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist. She earlier had internships at WBZ-CBS radio in Boston and worked in Ireland with Sounds Alive, creating long-form radio documentaries. She earned her BA from Boston University. Covering the climate change impact on Cape Cod and the south shore of Massachusetts Eve works for WCAI as an environmental reporter, focusing on stories about how climate change affects people in the region. Cape Cod is at the forefront of some of the most hopeful efforts to combat climate change and reshape the forces contributing to it. The science critical to understanding the changing atmosphere is happening in laboratories in Woods Hole. Additionally, scientists from these laboratories are part of grass-roots level conversations about how we should respond to the environmental crisis. Cape Cod is home to the imminent launch of the nation’s largest offshore wind farm, just south of Martha’s Vineyard, which promises a new era in renewable energy. There are important, people-driven stories of innovation and adaptation to be told. WCAI’s science program host, Dr. Heather Goldstone, will serve a mentor for the environmental reporter, having covered this region and topic for years.

Erica Hellerstein

Erica is an award-winning investigative journalist born and raised in the Bay Area. She worked as an investigative and political reporter at INDY Week in Raleigh, NC, a researcher and consultant on a VICE documentary, a reporter/researcher at PBS/Frontline and a fellow at the International Women’s Media Foundation, where she covered migration and domestic violence among asylum seekers in Honduras and on the California-Mexico border. Her investigative series on North Carolina’s commercial hog farming industry won the Philip D. Reed Award for Environmental Writing and was a finalist for numerous other awards. She has a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Marie Claire, Elle, and elsewhere, and her investigations have been highlighted in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Childhood poverty in San Jose and for The California Divide Project Erica covers childhood poverty in San Jose and the Bay Area as part of “The California Divide.” Poverty is the biggest coverage gap in the state. In response to this, CALmatters, McClatchy’s five California news organizations and the 25 Digital First newsrooms have created a news hub with a collaboration project on the topic. “The California Divide” is an unprecedented news partnership that combines the strengths of respected news-gathering organizations across the state. The shared goal is to build a sustainable and replicable model for data-driven, change-making journalism in this critically underserved coverage area. Report for America has teamed up with three of the new hub’s newsrooms to offer three new corps member placements: CALmatters in Sacramento, The Fresno Bee in Fresno and The Mercury News in San Jose.

Emily Woodruff

Emily has been the managing health editor of Being Patient, a health news start-up exclusively covering brain health and Alzheimer’s. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in STAT News, The Baltimore Sun, Gothamist and Refinery29. Earlier she worked as a copywriter and an SEO specialist. She majored in English at the University of Florida in Gainesville and received an M.S. from the Columbia University School of Journalism. Public health in south Louisiana Emily covers healthcare and public health in south Louisiana, with a focus on the New Orleans metro region. Currently, there is not a single, full-time health reporter working for any newsroom in Louisiana, a state that sits near the bottom on nearly every U.S. public health metric. The story of healthcare is also often the story of poverty in America, and the lack of coverage of health in a poor state like Louisiana means important stories are slipping through the cracks. Emily reports to the New Orleans Metro Editor and Managing Editor and covers daily news related to all aspects of public health, including coverage of hospitals, public health officials and health agencies, academic research, and city, state, and national data. She produces enterprise and feature stories for print and online related to these and other related topics. Emily works in concert with journalists who have complementary beats, such as education, business and City Hall, to create stories that have a broader impact.

Eileen Grench

Eileen is an Olympic fencer-turned-journalist. As a dual Panamanian-American citizen, she competed for the Panamanian team at the 2016 Olympic Games and also won national, Pan-American and World Cup medals. She is currently a fellow at the Global Migration Project at Columbia University, where she has told the stories of Central American women as well as inequities in migrant women’s health — writing for The Intercept, The Nation, and Documented, among others. She has also contributed research to The New York Times. Earlier in her career, she worked as a clinic assistant at Stanford Children’s Hospital, where she served as a Bilingual advocate for documented and undocumented Latino families. She majored in Spanish and international studies at the Ohio State University and received an M.S. from the Columbia University School of Journalism. Juvenile justice in the Bronx Eileen covers justice issues, starting with juvenile justice in the Bronx. The South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the country, is home to Horizon Juvenile Center, which houses nearly one-quarter of the 700 16-and-17-year-olds incarcerated on any given day in the city. The center made headlines recently amid outbreaks of violence. The neighborhood, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, is also home to Bronx Criminal Court, which no longer has any reporters assigned full-time to the press room. The verdict’s out on the borough’s nearly year-old innovative drug court, which stresses treatment over incarceration as the opioid addiction crisis mounts. The South Bronx, meanwhile, has been designated as the site of one of the local lockups slated to replace Rikers Island, much to the ire of many area residents. Overall, the Bronx is about 85 percent black or Hispanic, roughly mirroring the demographics of Rikers. Eileen uses a combination of data and in-person reporting to explore the human toll and political scope of justice-related issues.

Devna Bose

Devna has worked as a multimedia journalist for newspapers across Mississippi. She interned at the Neshoba Democrat, Jackson Free Press, Meridian Star, and Oxford Eagle. She has covered city government, mental health, the LGBTQ+ community and other issues. She attended University of Mississippi, where she served as Managing Editor of the student-run publication, The Daily Mississippian. She has won several awards for her feature writing, photography, and design from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Mississippi Press Association. Public schools in Newark, N.J. Devna is expanding Chalkbeat’s Newark bureau and works closely with the bureau chief to report on critical education news in the area. She helps the Newark team build a loyal base of readership among local education stakeholders: parents, educators, nonprofit leaders and policymakers. Embracing Chalkbeat’s local-first approach, Devna attends school board meetings, press conferences and community events in Newark. Additionally, she helps plan and organize community engagement events, such as office hours and listening tours, to draw in traditionally harder-to-reach readers. Devna’s engagement work creates ongoing opportunities to exchange ideas with partners to understand how Chalkbeat’s content is serving its audiences, allowing the news organization to continually improve its approach.

David Fuchs

David is a radio reporter and producer whose work has aired on “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and PRI’s “The World.” He started his career with local newspapers and radio stations in California and Vermont and has spent the last two years as a freelance producer in New York City, working with organizations like Radiolab, NPR and CBS News. His work has covered everything from women’s surf contests in Morocco to anti-poaching efforts in South Africa to coastal zoning policy in California. David is a graduate of Middlebury College. Energy and environment David focuses on southern Utah, with an eye towards political coverage at the state and federal level, growth, public lands, energy, water and the environment. He covers the growth of the region, specifically St. George, which according to March 2018 estimates from the Census Bureau is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States. David works in dual capacities as a half-time general assignment reporter helping to cover the region, while the other half of the time he tackles issues such as natural resources, water and growth. He works remotely, away from the main newsroom in Salt Lake City.

Ciara McCarthy

Ciara McCarthy has worked as an intern for the Marshall Project and a researcher at the Guardian U.S., where she contributed to “The Counted,” an Emmy-nominated project on police killings. She later worked as a staff community reporter for Patch, covering neighborhoods in Manhattan. In college, she was the editor-in-chief of the Daily Northwestern, the respected student-run daily of Northwestern University. In her first year as an RFA corps member, McCarthy covered local government for the Victoria Advocate. In her second year, she will focus on rural public health. Covering rural public health In her first year, Ciara covered City Hall for the Victoria Advocate, the second-oldest newspaper in Texas, a 172 year old, family-owned daily newspaper serving the rural communities in and around Victoria near the Gulf of Mexico. During this time, she also helped her newsroom maintain continuing coverage of Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts in rural communities overshadowed by Houston flooding and calamities elsewhere. In her second year, Ciara shifted her coverage gap and focuses on rural public health issues in Victoria County and the Crossroads region, focusing on how local petrochemical plants impact residents’ health, along with other issues specific to the state of rural health in the area.