2020-2021

Kaitlyn Nicholas

Kaitlyn Nicholas reports for Yellowstone Public Radio in Billings, Montana, where she concentrates on Native American issues including the crisis of murdered and missing indigenous women, water rights, conflicts with nearby communities and other issues affecting the federally recognized tribes in Montana and Wyoming. An audio journalist, Nicholas recently completed her master’s in journalism at New York University, where her stories often focused on the intersection of biological engineering, history the U.S. legal system. While in graduate school, she also worked as an archival researcher for the history podcast, “Fiasco.” In 2019 she was an intern at Yellowstone Public Radio. NIcholas earned her Bachelor's in English from Montana State University.   

Renee Hickman

Renee Hickman is a reporter for the Wausau Daily Herald. At the Wisconsin paper, she covers population loss and its consequences, including everything from examining the dearth of tax revenue on school districts to the difficulties staffing hospitals face during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hickman has covered local government for the Unified Newspaper Group in Verona, Wisconsin, after completing a Fulbright Fellowship to Ukraine, where she researched and reported on local journalism. She has covered agriculture, foreign affairs and other topics while freelancing and interning at the NBC News Political Unit and Bloomberg BNA. In 2018, she graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, where she worked as a research assistant at Investigative Reporters and Editors, was awarded a scholarship from the White House Correspondents’ Association, and won the school’s O.O. McIntyre Writing Award. Prior to her career in journalism, Hickman worked for several years in a variety of non-profit roles and received an undergraduate degree in history from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She is from Rome, Georgia.

Monique John

Monique John reports for WCPO, a TV and digital news outlet in Cincinnati where she focuses on gentrification, a topic that’s failed to receive sustained attention in the southern Ohio city. John is a writer and TV reporter with a background in covering a slew of issues in the U.S. and has worked extensively in Liberia. In 2019, she began freelancing for News 12 in New York, covering everything from business development to breaking news. Her work in Liberia dates to 2017 when she covered that country’s presidential election for the Voice of America. She also worked as a stringer for the BBC and has written for various outlets including OkayAfrica, NY1, The Root and Women’s eNews. In 2019, she received a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to examine the aftermath of a sexual abuse scandal in Liberia and the African country’s laws on violence against women. John is a graduate of Fordham University.

Alex 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.

Dante Miller

Dante Miller reports for WFAE/Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Digital Public Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, a partnership of the local NPR station and the region’s largest public library system. She focuses on expanding Wikipedia entries that both describe and impact the community and uses public forums to help get the community’s input. Miller knows the area well. She covered community-based stories during her time as a reporter and freelancer for QCityMetro, Charlotte’s leading digital platform for the African-American community. She was the Union County Reporter for Charlotte Media Group, the owners of Union County Weekly, South Charlotte Weekly, and Matthews Mint Hill Weekly. Miller is a proud alumna of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and received her Bachelor's of Science in journalism and mass communications in August 2017. As a student, she served as the first Yard Section Editor for her university newspaper, which focused on hard and campus news stories. During her free time, Miller enjoys reading, singing and writing poetry. She's a military brat who was born in Arlington, Texas, but raised in Wilson, North Carolina.

Megan Stringer

Megan Stringer reports for the Wichita Eagle, where she focuses on issues facing the working class including the decline in unions and changes to state worker compensation laws. (Wichita is a major manufacturing center.)  It’s a perfect fit for Stringer, who covered business and economic development for the Wausau Daily Herald and across Wisconsin for the USA Today Network. Her stories touched on everything from manufacturing to restaurants. While in school, Stringer was an associate editor for 14 East Magazine in Chicago, the Online student-run Publication of DePaul University where she focused on engagement and multimedia journalism. She also interned in the consumer investigation unit of NBC5 Chicago. Stringer grew up in the greater St. Louis area.

Sarah Spicer

Sarah Spicer reports for The Wichita Eagle and focuses on climate change in the region. While many news stories focus on climate change on the coasts, Kansas and the Midwest are seeing its effects, too, in terms of everything from extreme weather to cattle prices. An award winning investigative reporter, Spicer has been studying investigative techniques at The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the past year. While there, she worked as a student assistant for Columbia Journalism Investigations in partnership with ProPublica, investigating dating apps and sexual assault. She was Editor-in-Chief of her college paper, The Bulletin, at Emporia State University in Emporia, Kansas, for two years. While there, she wrote a groundbreaking investigative series about a professor who sexually assaulted an undergraduate student and how the university handled Title IX cases. The Kansas Press Association awarded the piece the best investigative story of the year, and The Bulletin won the Liberty Bell Award for Outstanding Service from the Chase and Lyon County Bar Association and the Above and Beyond Award from the Kansas Sunshine Coalition for the coverage. Spoon was born and raised in Neodesha, Kansas.

Sara Ernst

Sara Willa Ernst reports for KERA and The Texas Newsroom, a journalism collaboration among the public radio stations of Texas and NPR, where she covers health disparities related to factors including income that affect Houston communities. Ernst was a Reporting Fellow at New Hampshire Public Radio, working both in daily news and long-form podcasting. During her time there, she was a producer for the podcasts The Second Greatest Show On Earth and Outside/In. She co-reported a two-part podcast on sex education in New Hampshire, covering topics from the statewide curriculum, abstinence-based education, LGBTQ inclusivity, consent and more. Before working on the podcast team, she was a General Assignment Reporter in the NHPR newsroom, covering the charter school debate embroiling the Granite State and the 2020 New Hampshire Presidential Primary. After graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Ernst interned for NPR in Washington D.C. She previously held internships at Nashville Public Radio and WBUR Boston. She was a Chips Quinn Scholar in 2018 and is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Anthony Orozco

Anthony Orozco reports for WITF, NPR radio and PBS television stations, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he focuses on the Latino community in Redding, Lebanon and other towns and cities along the state’s Route 222 corridor. Orozco comes to the job with a body of work devoted to community storytelling, watchdog journalism and immigration coverage. He began as a reporter and later the news editor at the University of Cincinnati’s independent student newspaper, The News Record. After graduating in 2012, Orozco immediately jumped into daily news reporting at the Reading Eagle newspaper in Reading, Pennsylvania. He specialized in writing about Latino affairs, covered breaking news and eventually took a senior position as the paper’s City Hall reporter. Orozco left the newspaper in 2019 to become an independent investigative reporter, examining issues such as local water quality, as well as telling client stories for nonprofit organizations. Orozco is also an accomplished poet and performer.  

Mark Rosenberg

Mark Rosenberg reports for The Victoria Advocate, the second oldest paper in Texas, where he reports on the rural counties surrounding the small city on the coastal plains. Rosenberg reported on criminal justice as an intern at the Cincinnati Enquirer, where he contributed to Accused, the Enquirer ’s true-crime podcast. Previously, he worked as a breaking news intern at the Toledo Blade, reporting on public policy and rural politics. He earned his B.A. from Yale University, where he served as editor-in-chief of The New Journal, a magazine that publishes narrative and investigative reporting. He is from Lexington, Massachusetts.