2020-2021

Lexi Peery

Lexi Peery is a reporter for KUER/NPR Utah where she focuses on issues about fast-growing Washington County. Peery is a Salt Lake City native who has been in Southern Utah the past year reporting on all things related to the environment, development and government for The Spectrum & Daily News. She returned to Utah after graduating from Boston University, majoring in journalism and concentrating in environmental studies while earning the Blue Chip Award. During her senior year she was an environmental and newsroom fellow at WBUR, Boston’s NPR station. That same year she also interned for the national call-in show, “On Point.” While at BU, she worked her way up to editor-in-chief of the independent student newspaper, The Daily Free Press. She also was a correspondent at The Boston Globe and did freelance reporting for City Journals in the Salt Lake Valley.

Lucia Starbuck

Lucia Starbuck reports for KUNR Public Radio, where she focuses on community reporting and the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in Reno, Nevada. Starbuck knows the area well. She is from Reno and graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, along with a minor in cinema and media studies. Local community issues are her passion, including the affordable housing crisis, access to oral healthcare and the challenges voters with disabilities face while participating in the election process. Along with radio, Starbuck reports in various formats, including digital storytelling and live reporting on social media. She has also directed and filmed two documentaries about homelessness. Starbuck contributed to KUNR’s coverage of hateful expressions at the University of Nevada, Reno, produced in 2019, which won a regional Edward R. Murrow award in the Best Continuing Coverage category and first place in the Associated Press Television and Radio Association (APTRA) broadcast contest for Continuing Coverage. Starbuck co-created and contributed to the series Spurs & Mud: A Century of Rodeo, which won first place from APTRA in 2019 for Best Sports Coverage.

Riane Roldan

Roldan reports for KUT in Austin, Texas and concentrates on the costs and benefits of suburban growth in Hays County. Roldan covered politics, immigration, and the environment during internships at The Texas Tribune and the Austin American-Statesman. She graduates from Emerson College in May with a bachelor's degree in journalism and grew up in Miami, Florida, where she attended Miami Dade College. Roldan has covered criminal justice for The Medill Justice Project and attended The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. Born to Cuban and Chilean families, she speaks Spanish and is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Roldan is also an alumnus of the Chips Quinn Scholars Program for Diversity in Journalism and won the first place award for in-depth reporting from the Florida College Press Association Miami.

Allyson Ortegon

Allyson Ortegon is working for KUT in Austin, Texas where she covers growth and development in nearby Hays County. Before that, she covered politics and policy, including the 86th Texas Legislature, during fellowships with The Texas Tribune and with Texas NPR affiliate stations. She wrote for The Alcalde, the award-winning alumni magazine published by The University of Texas at Austin since 1913. In an earlier stint at KUT, Austin’s NPR Station, she participated in  NPR's Next Generation Radio project. At UT, she reported across radio, television and print media for student publications including The Daily Texan and Texas Student Television. She will graduate with a degree in journalism and a secondary concentration in business. She is a two-time recipient of awards from The Headliner’s Foundation of Texas and she received the Jo Caldwell Meyer Scholarship from the Women Communicators of Austin, the Bob Schenkkan Endowed Presidential Scholarship, and the Carmage and Martha Ann Walls Foundation Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Journalism.

Zila Sanchez

Zila Sanchez reports for La Noticia, the largest Spanish language publication in North Carolina, where she focuses on affordable housing, a huge issue in Charlotte. Low-income families find it hard to afford to live in the city anymore. The issue is even bigger in the Latino community where they face added challenges of abuse and discrimination, including eviction from apartments or mobile homes, no relocation assistance and many other issues. Sanchez is a Charlotte native who knows the area well. She was the editor-in-chief of North Carolina A&T State University’s independent student newspaper, The A&T Register. While on The Register, Sanchez led her team in creating a Primary Elections Voter Guide for all the public Historically Black Colleges and Universities in North and South Carolina. Sanchez was able to participate in the Poynter Institute’s College Media Project, the Black Narrative, where the staff explored biases within local news organizations that affect the public’s perspective. She was also a speaker at the 2019 National College Media Convention and N.C. Scholastic Media Association’s Summer Institute.  

Jonathan Ng

Jonathan Ng is a business reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, keeping the charity and non-profit sectors accountable to Nevada’s citizens. Ng recently completed his master’s degree and graduated from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Prior to J- school, he worked at the Boston Herald as a business reporter, covering real estate, casinos and gambling, legal affairs and the Greater Boston economy. He also covered the intersection of business and politics at the newspaper’s City Hall bureau. Previously, Ng worked as a reporter at the Boston Globe and the Dorchester Reporter. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Suffolk University.

Silas Walker

Silas Walker is a photojournalist at the Lexington Herald-Leader where he helps plug the reporting gap in rural, Eastern Kentucky through visual storytelling. Walker worked as a visual journalist during internships with the Deseret News and a prior stint with the Lexington Herald-Leader and as a student at Western Kentucky University, where he was the visuals editor for the independent student newspaper, the College Heights Herald. He also did freelance work for organizations such as Getty Images and the Los Angeles Times. Walker was named the 2019 Kentucky student photographer of the year by the Kentucky News Photographers Association and placed 7th in the news and feature category in the National Hearst Photojournalism competition. He is originally from Portland, Oregon.

Crystal Niebla

Crystal Niebla is a reporter for the Long Beach Post in California concentrating on the underreported West Long Beach neighborhood and its large Latino, African-American and Asian communities that are physically and economically isolated from the rest of Long Beach. Before becoming a Report for America corps member, Niebla reported for and mentored young multi-media journalists at VoiceWaves, a youth-led program based in Long Beach. Before that, she freelanced for the Post, interned at San Pedro’s Random Lengths News, and served as the News Editor for the Daily 49er, the student paper at Long Beach State University. One of Niebla’s most notable accomplishments includes reporting about a local refinery expansion project that lacked political attention from Long Beach officials until she released her in-depth story. Early on she realized that coming from a poor family in South Central L.A., she could use fearless journalism to influence positive change in society.

Sebastian Echeverry

Sebastian Echeverry writes for the Long Beach Post in California where he concentrates on North Long Beach, a predominantly working-class neighborhood of almost 100,000 residents, the majority of whom are Hispanic and about one-fourth are African-American. Echeverry comes to the post with considerable experience. He was the acting publisher/ managing editor for the Signal Tribune newspaper in Long Beach in 2020. Before that position, he worked as the design editor/production manager and as a general assignment reporter covering Long Beach and Signal Hill. As an undergraduate at California State University/Long Beach, he was an intern for NBC4 Los Angeles and Telemundo 52. There, he worked with the digital team, uploading content to the website and social media pages. He’s created videos, podcasts and photo slideshows during his time reporting from major sporting events like the Grand Prix of Long Beach to breaking news such as protests and active crime scenes.

Ellen Wagner

Ellen Wagner reports on municipal services and budget cuts for Mahoning Matters, a new collaboration between Google and McClatchy news based in Youngstown, Ohio. Wagner knows Ohio. She covered health, local events, and crime as a metro intern at The Columbus Dispatch last summer. She was the editor-in-chief of The Post, an independent student newspaper at Ohio University and in the college town of Athens in the southern part of the state. Wagner also covered crime, courts and police in Athens during her four years at The Post. She graduated from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University in the spring with a major in journalism news and information and a certificate in Italian studies. She is from Westlake, a suburb outside of Cleveland. Wagner, along with the other executive editors of The Post, won Society of Professional Journalists’ 2019 Mark of Excellence Award for editorial writing.