2019-2020

Christopher Aadland

Chris has worked at the Wisconsin State Journal, where he covered public safety, city government, breaking news and others subjects. During college, he was a student reporter at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune covering state government and politics. As a student at the University of Minnesota, he was the Managing Editor of the award-winning, student-run Minnesota Daily. Chris, whose father is an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, started learning the Ojibwe language while at the University of Minnesota and developed a desire to contribute to better, more nuanced coverage of Indian Country as a journalist. Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes on the Wind River Reservation Casper is less than three hours east of the Wind River Reservation, where the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes reside. Already historically underserved communities, the tribes have received less coverage from the Star-Tribune over the years as the newsroom has downsized. Chris is based in Riverton, the largest city bordering the reservation, to cover Native American issues. There is no shortage of story ideas to pursue — for instance, the future of health care near the reservation is currently uncertain as the hospitals there undergo changes, and the government shutdown of early 2019 briefly created what one of the tribes deemed a crisis situation. Chris produces regular enterprise pieces while also writing breaking news and daily stories.

ChrisAnna Mink

ChrisAnna Mink is a pediatric infectious diseases specialist and has been a freelance journalist. For more than two decades, she served her community as a successful physician, including working as the Medical Director of at the K.I.D.S. Foster Care Clinic as part of Harbor UCLA Medical Center and as a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In 2014 she began writing more about about health and ultimately decided to become a health journalist. She got a M.A. from University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and has written about child health issues for the California Health Report and University of Southern California’s Center for Health Journalism. Covering children’s health in the Central Valley, California ChrisAnna focuses on children’s health, both physical and mental, and explores how the paper can inform, educate and help bring about a healthier community. Childhood asthma, obesity, and food insecurity are big issues in Modesto and throughout the Central Valley. Stanislaus, and nearby Tuolumne County, also are among the California counties with the highest number of emergency room visits by children with dental issues, according to the California Department of Public Health. More than 300,000 kids in the Central Valley live in poverty. She works in concert with local schools, state and county health and environmental agencies and local hospitals and a new care center to identify current issues and solutions in children’s health. 

Chris Ehrmann

Chris is an Emmy-nominated journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker. He has worked for the Associated Press in Michigan covering state politics, the 2016 presidential election and the Flint water crisis. Previously, he was a reporter for the Newport News-Times on the Oregon coast where he directed, filmed and edited two documentaries: one on the homeless crisis in Newport and another on inmates living with mental illnesses, which earned him an Emmy nomination. He attended Wayne State University in Detroit where he was a part of the Journalism Institute for Media Diversity Honors Program and a recipient of the Robert McGruder Scholarship and the Benjamin J. Burns Endowed Scholarship. Statehouse coverage focused on criminal justice and mental health Chris reports from Hartford, Connecticut’s state capitol, alongside veteran statehouse staff, with a mission of looking at criminal justice issues across the state, including poverty, race and changing policy of who is prosecuted, how they are incarcerated and how politics in America today influences those issues. He has access to AP colleagues on the national state government reporting team, data experts and a network of colleagues with deep experience reporting on government. AP’s team of reporters in Washington, D.C. also help him understand the connections between state and local trends. He produces a balance of spot news and enterprise work, with an emphasis on data-driven stories that can be distributed to AP customers around the state.

Carlos Ballesteros

Carlos Ballesteros is a former reporter for Newsweek, where he covered politics, foreign policy, labor and immigration. He has also written about his hometown of Chicago for the Chicago magazine, South Side Weekly, Nation, and In These Times. He was editor-in-chief of Claremont College’s Student Life for which he led a team of more than one hundred student journalists.

Camille von Kaenel

Camille is an environmental reporter who, for three years, has covered climate change policy for E&E News in Washington, D.C. Her writing has also appeared in Fast Company, Atlas Obscura, The Alpinist, among others. Born in Switzerland and raised in California, she has a bachelor’s in international relations from the University of Geneva and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University in New York. Wildfire recovery in Northern California Camille works with both of these news organizations to cover wildfires in Mendocino and Butte counties. During the summer of 2018, Mendocino County saw the state’s largest wildfire in its history. This after still recovering from the major wildfire in October of 2017. Not six months later, Butte County beat the record. The Camp Fire killed 86 people, destroyed 15,000 structures and displaced thousands. Camille tracks the wildfire recovery processes, reports on the ongoing legislation in Sacramento and digs into the science of how the drought, climate change and more are affecting this problem. Camille produces a mix of local human-interest features on the people recovering, science stories on what is happening and policy stories on the state’s prevention plans including new technology to fight in the future.

Camalot Todd

Camalot reported on community issues in Las Vegas, including a long-term project on underage sex trafficking, for the Las Vegas Sun and its sister publication, Las Vegas Weekly. For the Sun, she wrote a pathbreaking investigative piece called, “Children on the Cusp: The transition from foster care to adulthood is leaving some behind.” The Nevada Press Association identified this work as the best investigative story of the year and named Camalot the Best Community Reporter of 2017. She also worked as a reporter for KUNV radio. She is a graduate of University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Mental health issues in Buffalo and western New York state According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in five adults live with a mental illness and just over 20 percent of children have had a seriously debilitating mental disorder. Unprecedented changes are roiling the mental health system including Medicaid and Affordable Care Act redesign, and a historic opioid epidemic. The changes mean local governments, health care providers, etc. are constantly having to adapt in order to meet new standards. On top of that, in western New York, there’s a shortage in mental health funding, beds and workforce. Cam focuses on mental health stigma and the state of mental health care in western New York, specifically in Erie, Niagara and Chautauqua counties. With Buffalo being a border city, there’s also the opportunity to look at mental health awareness and treatment in Canada, a country that prides itself on the way it approaches the topic. Spectrum News Buffalo provides training for shooting, editing and using newsroom software, and Cam will have the opportunity to participate in regular storytelling workshops. Additionally, Cam works in conjunction with the Networks Digital team to produce content for distribution on relevant social media channels.

Becky Jacobs

Becky worked as a crime and courts reporter in Northwest Indiana for the Post-Tribune, a suburban newspaper of the Chicago Tribune. She previously covered courts, crime and general assignment at the Grand Forks Herald, where she was named the North Dakota Newspaper Association rookie reporter of the year in 2016. She also was a Dow Jones News Fund copy editing intern at the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minnesota, and interned with The Local, an English news outlet in Stockholm, Sweden. She got her B.S. from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Covering the status of women in Utah Becky covers the status of women in Utah. Utah is routinely labeled as the worst state for women because it has the nation’s widest wage gap, a low college graduation rate for women and fewer women leaders in politics and business. (That number dropped from 11.4 to 6.4 percent since 2014.) From childcare access to cultural pressures — primarily associated with Mormon culture — there is some important targeted research happening in this area. Becky translates the data and ties it to personal narratives to give more context and attention to women’s issues.

Arielle Dreher

Prior to covering public health in eastern Washington state, Arielle worked as a staff reporter and writer for the Jackson Free Press, the alternative weekly in Mississippi. She covered state government, earning numerous awards including several first place Green Eyeshade awards. She has also received awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Awards and the Associated Press for feature writing, politics reporting, business reporting, courts reporting and public service. More recently, splitting her time between Pasco, Washington and Andalucía, Spain, Arielle has written about rural America and happiness for 74 Million, covered local business for the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business and wrote about mental health and reproductive health for the Free Press. She received her B.A. from Azusa Pacific University and her M.A. from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Public health in eastern Washington state Arielle reports on health and social issues in Spokane and the surrounding region as part of the paper’s Metro Desk team. That includes covering breaking news and diving into issue stories about key health topics, such as opioid abuse and access to care; social issues, such as the need for more foster families; and medical research and innovation from the area’s universities. She works with the Review’s government affairs editor, who is skilled at guiding novice reporters and helping them look beyond the process to find important issues and compelling human stories that will engage readers. As part of a small newsroom team, Arielle has the chance to tackle a wide variety of assignments and gets hands-on training with our digital team.

Angie Jackson

Born and raised in metro Detroit, Angie has been a reporter for the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., where she covered crime and criminal justice. She has embedded in neighborhoods that have long struggled with gun violence, provided an in-depth look at a mass shooting that left seven police officers dead or wounded and shed light on suicides among firefighters and first responders. She previously worked in Michigan at the Grand Rapids Press and the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Angie is a graduate of Michigan State University. Covering formerly incarcerated citizens and their families Angie covers the issues of formerly incarcerated citizens in Detroit. Michigan’s prison population is coming down from a record high in 2007 due in part to a combination of relatively fewer new prisoners and a slightly higher parole rate. The recidivism rate has steadily declined in the last 20 years. This is good news, but what happens when you’re out of prison? How do you find work? Many employers won’t hire individuals who were formerly incarcerated. If you can find work, there are still many obstacles to building a good life —transportation, substance abuse and job training are just a few. The future of each returning citizen is key to an equitable recovery for the city of Detroit. This unique reporting role will focus on storytelling, myth/stigma-busting, resource-building and community engagement. The audience for this beat includes the formerly incarcerated, their families, people in positions to help and the community at large. Angie speaks to people in each constituency to define their needs and the best way to reach them, as well as leaders and clients of several existing nonprofits for returning citizens about the problems they face. The Detroit Free Press wants to know their stories. We also want to know how to help. Angie thinks holistically about what audiences need and how to reach them.

Alexandra Watts

Alexandra was a 2017 Next Generation Radio Fellow with NPR in 2017. While at Arizona State University, she became the first ever audio and podcast editor for The State Press, and she worked on podcasts/audio with the news division of Arizona PBS. Watts has a BA & MMC from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She had internships with KJZZ and worked in community engagement with the PIN Bureau, where she was part of the team who won the Associated Press Media Editors’ Innovator of the Year Award for College Students. Poverty reporting in the Mississippi Delta The Mississippi Delta remains one of the most deprived regions in the country. Alex examines how poverty affects the lives of residents and the resources needed to address their critical needs.