2020-2021

Matthew Martinez

Matthew Martinez is a reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, covering low-income minority neighborhoods in Milwaukee's central city. Martinez is a 2020 graduate of  Marquette University, the Catholic Jesuit university in Milwaukee, where he worked on the Marquette Wire, the student news organization. As the executive editor last year, Martinez wrote a three-part series, “Left Behind,”  detailing a Marquette wrestler’s suicide in 1978. The series uncovered an altered suicide note and evidence of physical discipline against the student by a Jesuit priest. The project recently won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and Wisconsin Newspaper Association for in-depth reporting. Martinez has also edited and contributed to series about homelessness, human trafficking and healthcare, among other things. Last summer, he worked for Milwaukee Magazine as an editorial intern. He also worked in the SPJ newsroom during their Excellence in Journalism Conference in San Antonio last year.

Annika Hom

Annika Hom reports for Mission Local, a digital and investigative news outlet based in San Francisco that covers the entire city. Hom concentrates on inequality in the city’s Mission District.  Hom worked as a freelancer following her experience as a metro journalist at the Boston Globe and a news intern at SF WEEKLY. In December 2019, she graduated from Emerson College in Boston with a degree in journalism and a minor in poetry. She was an editor and reporter for the arts section of Emerson’s independent newspaper, The Berkeley Beacon. A native of Foster City, California, she’s the daughter of a Chinese-American father and Filipina mother. She speaks fluent Spanish.

Shaun Griswold

Shaun Griswold reports for New Mexico In Depth, where he focuses on the Native American population in Albuquerque, the state’s largest metropolitan area. It’s one of the first beats to focus on Native Americans in an urban setting. Griswold is a New Mexico journalist covering issues for southwest Indigenous people. He, himself, is a member of Laguna Pueblo, while also holding family ties to Jemez and Zuni Pueblos. He’s worked as a content producer KUSA-TV, the NBC affiliate in Denver, and on the assignments desk at KOB-TV, part of the Hubbard Broadcasting chain. He attended the University of New Mexico.

Supriya Sridhar

Sridhar Supriya covers blight in northeast Oklahoma for Oklahoma Watch, an investigative non-profit news organization based in Oklahoma City. She was a magazine intern at Politico in 2019 where she fact-checked, researched, coordinated projects and reported for Politico’s policy team. After interning she headed off for an adventure, hiking over 500 miles of the Appalachian Trail. During her time on the trail, she walked through communities with a lack of adequate news sources, deepening her belief in the necessity of local news. In college, Supriya interned at The Oklahoman, The Wichita Eagle and the Louisville Courier-Journal as a Chips Quinn Scholar. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma in December 2018 with Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, and held several leadership positions at her student paper.

Keaton Ross

Keaton Ross covers underserved communities for Oklahoma Watch, a nonprofit investigative news outlet based in Oklahoma City. Ross is a spring 2020 graduate of Oklahoma Christian University where he served as editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Talon. (He majored in journalism and minored in political science.) In March 2020, Ross’ reporting on an admissions counselor who led a racist activity at an area high school was cited by several national news outlets, including The New York Times. As an intern at The Oklahoman in 2019, Ross covered topics ranging from the national impact of the state’s opioid trial to a 93-year-old man riding his bike across Oklahoma. In 2018, Ross interned with The Norman Transcript.

Liz Teitz

Liz Teitz covers housing affordability for the Ouray County Plaindealer, a weekly paper that’s been publishing for over a century in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado. Teitz previously covered higher education and state politics for Hearst Connecticut Media Group through the Hearst Journalism Fellowship. She has also covered education for the San Antonio Express-News, and written about local government, schools, courts and disaster recovery in Southeast Texas for the Beaumont Enterprise. Teitz grew up in Rhode Island and has a B.A. in American Studies from Georgetown University.

Kyle Pfannenstiel

Kyle Pfannenstiel is a reporter for the Post Register in Idaho Falls, Idaho, covering rural healthcare. The Register covers the eastern part of the state as well as parts of Montana and Wyoming. Pfannenstiel began his reporting career at University of Idaho’s student newspaper, The Argonaut. Soon after, he covered the Idaho State Legislature as an intern for Idaho Public Radio and the McClure Center for Public Policy Research. Pfannenstiel continued to cover government and politics for The Idaho Press in Nampa, where he reported on a 2018 ballot initiative to expand Medicaid access for Idahoans. He will graduate in May with a B.S. in journalism and political science from University of Idaho, which is located in Idaho’s panhandle. His last name means panhandle in German.

Maria Esquinca

María Esquinca is a reporter for Radio Bilingüe in Fresno, Calif, where she focuses on environmental issues in the San Joaquin Valley. A fronteriza, comfortable on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and mostly grew up across the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas. She is an M.F.A candidate at the University of Miami. She has focused her reporting on issues that affect communities of color like immigration, gentrification, and discrimination. She interned at WLRN, the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, and was a Dow Jones News Fund Business Reporting intern at Crain’s Detroit Business. As a News 21 Ethics and Excellence Fellow, she reported on lack of access to clean, drinking water in colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border. The story was re-published in outlets like The Texas Tribune and the Center for Public Integrity. During her undergraduate education, she was a reporter and editor at The Prospector, the student-run newspaper at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her stories earned her awards from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association and the College Media Association. Her poetry has been published in Waxwing, The Florida Review, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

Catherine Hoffman

Catherine Hoffman covers rural issues in Missouri for PBS Kansas City. She has interned as a video journalist covering faith stories for the past year, and before that was a video reporting intern at PBS Kansas City. In the spring of 2020 she premiered her first documentary short, “46 Years,” and has explored faith and resilience in her work. She holds a degree in documentary journalism from the University of Missouri with minors in French and black studies. She was raised in Dallas, Texas.

Erin McKinstry

Erin McKinstry reports for KCAW in Sitka, Alaska, a city and borough near Juneau with a population under 10,000. McKinstry brings experience to the KCAW post, where she concentrates on Sitka issues. She is an Alaska-based journalist and audio producer who has reported stories for Alaska Public Media, Edible Alaska, The Trace, The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, KBIA and Harvest Public Media. She’s a former host and producer for the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Radio Podcast and produces her own podcast called “Out Here” about life in rural Alaska. McKinstry has a master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She’s a fellow of Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), a Fulbright Scholar and an Edward R. Murrow Award Recipient from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).