2020-2021

Bennett Leckrone

Bennett Leckrone is a reporter for Maryland Matters, a news nonprofit based in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. Leckrone will concentrate on state elections, money, and ethics. He is a recent graduate of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, and recently completed an internship at The Chronicle of Higher Education in Washington, D.C.. Prior to graduating, he wrote about state and local governments during internships at The Columbus Dispatch, Dayton Daily News, PennLive.com and his hometown paper in Ohio, The Troy Daily News. Leckrone got his start covering city council meetings for the independent, student-run newspaper at Ohio University, The Post, and eventually became the paper’s long-form editor. Leckrone is a lifelong Ohio resident and has written extensively about Appalachian issues and the opioid epidemic.

Dee Dwyer

Dee Dwyer is a photojournalist at the DCist in Washington, D.C. where she focuses on minority communities. She holds a BFA in Filmmaking and Digital Production from The Art Institute of Washington and has studied at The Art Institute of Miami. After graduating in 2012, Dwyer traveled to Cuba, Jamaica, Brazil and several states documenting daily life. Dee’s work has been exhibited at Photoville, Photoschweiz, and at The DC Arts Center and The Congress Heights Arts and Culture Center. Her work has been published on the sites of BET, Allure, W magazine, The Daily Mail, MetroUK and others.

Adria Walker

Walker covers education for the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester, N.Y. Born, raised and educated in Mississippi, Walker worked as an editorial assistant at the Jackson Free Press, Mississippi’s alternative weekly. A 2019 cum laude graduate of Milsaps College, Walker was editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, the Purple & White and president of the Black Student Union. As a journalist, she’s covered multiple issues and breaking news stories including a Confederate flag protest at the state capitol and an in-depth look at the racial overtones of a campus robbery. Her honors thesis examined the role of black women in modern American social movements. She also taught yoga at an alternative school in Jackson and participated in an archeological dig in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

Nushrat Rahman

Nusrat Rahman covers economic mobility for the Detroit Free Press. A born and raised Detroiter, she interned for Hour Detroit Magazine. She has freelanced for Model D and Tostada Magazine and contributed to The New York Times. As a graduate student of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Rahman has written about a school in the Bronx for new immigrants and Bangladeshis working within New York City’s fast-food industry. A 2018 graduate of Wayne State University, Rahman is set to graduate this spring from Columbia, where she has focused on narrative and investigative reporting. She’s a graduate of the Al-Ikhlas Training Academy, a non-profit, full-time Islamic school in Detroit.

Clara Hendrickson

Clara Hendrickson does PolitiFact fact checking at the Detroit Free Press, where she holds public officials across the state to account on a range of issues. Prior to her time in Michigan, Hendrickson was a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and a freelance reporter for national and local outlets. At Brookings, she wrote on a range of public policy issues, including rising regional inequality, domestic and international efforts to regulate “Big Tech” and the financial challenges confronting local newsrooms. Her journalism has appeared in Boston Review, Democracy Journal, The Atlantic and Politico Magazine. She has also contributed feature articles for the non-profit outlet DCist, such as the impact on service workers of eliminating late-night public transportation routes and efforts to provide residents affordable exercise options in neighborhoods that don’t have a gym. Hendrickson holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Pennsylvania where she was an op-ed columnist for The Daily Pennsylvanian, frequently covering labor and income disparity issues on campus and in Philadelphia.

Syra Ortiz-Blanes

Syra Ortiz-Blanes covers Latin America and the Caribbean, and its many connections to Florida, for El Nuevo Herald in Miami. Ortiz-Blanes, a Puerto Rican journalist with a background in print and radio, covered hurricane evacuees in Philadelphia through a multimedia series she created on her own called “Las Voces de María” (The Voices of Maria), which raised thousands of dollars and secured housing for a displaced family and resources for hurricane survivors. Since then, Ortiz-Blanes has reported on Latinos in the U.S. and beyond. She graduates from the Columbia Journalism School in May 2020. During her time there, she spent a month in Puerto Rico covering gender violence in the wake of the 2020 earthquakes. Before Columbia, Ortiz-Blanes was the podcast coordinator and assistant editor for The Philadelphia Citizen, a solutions journalism media outlet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Documented NY, WHYY (NPR), and others. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania magna cum laude and was selected as a Kelly Writer’s House Junior Fellow.

Katie Kanazawich

KT Kanazawich is a photojournalist for Flint Beat based in Flint, Mich. A documentary and portrait photographer from Binghamton, N.Y., she has been working as a freelancer collecting community stories and photographing landscapes. She is an active community member volunteering time at East Learning Center Alternative School, The Dept. of Public Art, Avenue DIY, and The Broome County Humane Society. Kanazawich has also led photography lectures at Broome Community College and Cornell Cooperative Extension. She has worked as a darkroom assistant for photographer and artist ‘Teknari’. Before graduating with a degree in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2014, she interned with music photographer Shane McCauley, as well as at the Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Fine Art Gallery in NYC. Kanazawich is drawn to making colorful, intimate images of under-represented communities and people.

Haley Samsel

Haley Samsel covers the consequences of economic growth for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She has covered everything from cybersecurity to home medical equipment as an associate editor for HME Business, Mobility Management and Security Today magazines in Dallas. Before graduating from American University in 2019, she reported on Capitol Hill for The Texas Tribune and interned for NPR’s education desk, USA Today College, The Investigative Reporting Workshop and The Washington Monthly. She served as editor-in-chief of The Eagle, the university’s student newspaper, where she worked with students to publish innovative digital projects and accountability reporting. More recently, Haley contributed articles on youth issues to YR Media. She grew up in the Dallas suburb of Plano.

Frank Vaisvilas

Frank Vaisvilas covers Native American issues in Wisconsin for the Green Bay Press-Gazette in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The state is home to 11 federally recognized Native American tribes. Yet there is little to no coverage of tribes in the state. Vaisvilas traces his own roots to the Yaqui, the indigenous people of Mexico. He has been writing feature stories for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and the Daily Southtown the last seven years as well as serving as a breaking news weekend reporter for the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Tribune. Prior to this, Vaisvilas helped transform a shopper into an award-winning community newspaper with hard-hitting enterprise reporting, a professional redesign and an introduction of several sections. His work on rapidly rising property taxes for residents on Chicago’s south side was nominated for best investigative reporting by the Chicago Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Adapting to newsroom layoffs of photographers, Vaisvilas expanded his photography skills with the use of professional cameras and his photographs have often been featured on the front pages of major newspapers.

Alex Schwartz

Alex Schwartz covers endangered species and water issues for the Herald and News in Klamath Falls, Ore., whose readership spans four large rural counties in southern Oregon and northern California. A writer, photographer and graphic designer reporting at the intersection of science and culture, he was previously a freelance data reporter with The New York Times, helping track every coronavirus case in the U.S. Alex has also interned at Popular Science, where he reported on daily scientific research and used science to help explain the news. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he specialized in health, science and environmental reporting and was a managing editor of The Daily Northwestern. Alex is originally from Orlando, Florida.