2020-2021

Lauren Lindstrom

Lauren has been a reporter at The Blade in Toledo for nearly five years, most recently on the health beat covering everything from Ohio’s heroin and opioid epidemic to Toledo’s efforts to reduce childhood lead poisoning. Her work has won several state and local awards for investigation and breaking news, including the Press Club of Toledo’s 2017 Touchstone Award for a series examining the lack of local oversight on homes with unsafe lead levels. Originally from Wisconsin, she interned at the Green Bay Press Gazette and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Lauren majored in journalism with a minor in Spanish at Northwestern University, where she was news editor for North by Northwestern, an independent student magazine.

Kelan Lyons

Kelan was a staff writer for Salt Lake City Weekly, where he wrote about immigration, economic development and state and local politics. Before that, in Texas, he covered the Brazos County courthouse for the Bryan-College Station Eagle, where he won a 2018 Texas Associated Press Managing Editors first-place feature writing award for his story on how a 35-year-old cold case still affects the community. He was a fellow at City Bureau in Chicago, where he produced an audio documentary about police misconduct settlements. He majored in psychology at University of Pittsburgh and graduated with an M.S. from Northwestern University, where he was an Alfred Balk scholarship recipient.

Katherine Lewin

Katherine began her reporting career at Miami Today News and has worked as a freelance multimedia producer for Al Jazeera. In 2018, she received a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting to cover Cuba’s housing crisis. Katherine has won several awards from the Society of Professional Journalists for both her reporting and photo essays. She earned a B.A. in journalism from Flagler College, where she worked at The Gargoyle student newspaper producing award-winning coverage of refugees and civil rights in Northeast Florida.

Kate Groetzinger

Kate has been an intern, fellow and reporter at Texas Monthly, Texas Observer, Quartz, the Texas Standard, and Voces, an oral history project. More recently, at the Observer, she covered the Texas state legislature. She received her B.A. from Brown University, where she majored in English and wrote for the Brown Daily Herald, and M.A. from the University of Texas Moody School of Journalism, where she also worked as an audio storytelling teaching assistant.

Julia Fair

Julia has been a government watchdog reporter at The News Leader in Staunton, Virginia. Before that, she had internships with USA TODAY, the Kenosha News in Wisconsin, and the Rappahannock News in Virginia. She has won several awards including Virginia Press Honors for in-depth and investigative reporting. She’s a graduate of the Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Government watchdog reporting in Northern Kentucky Julia lives and works out of Northern Kentucky, watchdogging and explaining the efforts of the three major county governments, the major cities, and the state legislative efforts that are unique to Northern Kentucky. Among the topics of high concern to the Enquirer’s Northern Kentucky audience: growth, poverty, taxes and the upcoming 2019 gubernatorial election. In particular, she covers what local elected leaders are spending money on, what development projects they’re approving, the Frankfort delegation and how local schools are performing.

Eric Schmid

Eric Schmid has interned for Fox News Channel, AccuWeather as a Dow Jones News Fund Digital Media Intern and WSHU Public Radio. He covered governments in Nassau and Suffolk counties, environmental issues and other general assignments as a News Fellow at WSHU’s Long Island News Bureau. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Stony Brook University last May as one of the journalism school co-valedictorians. Community reporting in the Metro East area in Illinois Eric covers the Metro East area in Illinois and is developing insights and knowledge about issues specific to the area, including economics, education and politics. He produces radio reports, web features and multimedia reports specific to Metro East issues and news. For example, while St. Louis Public Radio has developed a strong reputation for providing important information about ballot issues in Missouri, it has never been able to develop a similar depth of coverage and knowledge for our Illinois constituents. St. Louis Public Radio is providing training about news, production and relevant issues Eric might find himself covering.

Eve Zuckoff

Eve was a producer for Radio Boston at WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station, where she produced daily segments and reported from the field on arts, culture, crime, justice, technology, business, politics and the environment. She interned and was a production assistant on the award-winning investigative podcast “Last Seen,” from WBUR and The Boston Globe, about the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist. She earlier had internships at WBZ-CBS radio in Boston and worked in Ireland with Sounds Alive, creating long-form radio documentaries. She earned her BA from Boston University. Covering the climate change impact on Cape Cod and the south shore of Massachusetts Eve works for WCAI as an environmental reporter, focusing on stories about how climate change affects people in the region. Cape Cod is at the forefront of some of the most hopeful efforts to combat climate change and reshape the forces contributing to it. The science critical to understanding the changing atmosphere is happening in laboratories in Woods Hole. Additionally, scientists from these laboratories are part of grass-roots level conversations about how we should respond to the environmental crisis. Cape Cod is home to the imminent launch of the nation’s largest offshore wind farm, just south of Martha’s Vineyard, which promises a new era in renewable energy. There are important, people-driven stories of innovation and adaptation to be told. WCAI’s science program host, Dr. Heather Goldstone, will serve a mentor for the environmental reporter, having covered this region and topic for years.

Emily Woodruff

Emily has been the managing health editor of Being Patient, a health news start-up exclusively covering brain health and Alzheimer’s. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in STAT News, The Baltimore Sun, Gothamist and Refinery29. Earlier she worked as a copywriter and an SEO specialist. She majored in English at the University of Florida in Gainesville and received an M.S. from the Columbia University School of Journalism. Public health in south Louisiana Emily covers healthcare and public health in south Louisiana, with a focus on the New Orleans metro region. Currently, there is not a single, full-time health reporter working for any newsroom in Louisiana, a state that sits near the bottom on nearly every U.S. public health metric. The story of healthcare is also often the story of poverty in America, and the lack of coverage of health in a poor state like Louisiana means important stories are slipping through the cracks. Emily reports to the New Orleans Metro Editor and Managing Editor and covers daily news related to all aspects of public health, including coverage of hospitals, public health officials and health agencies, academic research, and city, state, and national data. She produces enterprise and feature stories for print and online related to these and other related topics. Emily works in concert with journalists who have complementary beats, such as education, business and City Hall, to create stories that have a broader impact.

Eileen Grench

Eileen is an Olympic fencer-turned-journalist. As a dual Panamanian-American citizen, she competed for the Panamanian team at the 2016 Olympic Games and also won national, Pan-American and World Cup medals. She is currently a fellow at the Global Migration Project at Columbia University, where she has told the stories of Central American women as well as inequities in migrant women’s health — writing for The Intercept, The Nation, and Documented, among others. She has also contributed research to The New York Times. Earlier in her career, she worked as a clinic assistant at Stanford Children’s Hospital, where she served as a Bilingual advocate for documented and undocumented Latino families. She majored in Spanish and international studies at the Ohio State University and received an M.S. from the Columbia University School of Journalism. Juvenile justice in the Bronx Eileen covers justice issues, starting with juvenile justice in the Bronx. The South Bronx, the poorest congressional district in the country, is home to Horizon Juvenile Center, which houses nearly one-quarter of the 700 16-and-17-year-olds incarcerated on any given day in the city. The center made headlines recently amid outbreaks of violence. The neighborhood, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, is also home to Bronx Criminal Court, which no longer has any reporters assigned full-time to the press room. The verdict’s out on the borough’s nearly year-old innovative drug court, which stresses treatment over incarceration as the opioid addiction crisis mounts. The South Bronx, meanwhile, has been designated as the site of one of the local lockups slated to replace Rikers Island, much to the ire of many area residents. Overall, the Bronx is about 85 percent black or Hispanic, roughly mirroring the demographics of Rikers. Eileen uses a combination of data and in-person reporting to explore the human toll and political scope of justice-related issues.

David Fuchs

David is a radio reporter and producer whose work has aired on “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered” and PRI’s “The World.” He started his career with local newspapers and radio stations in California and Vermont and has spent the last two years as a freelance producer in New York City, working with organizations like Radiolab, NPR and CBS News. His work has covered everything from women’s surf contests in Morocco to anti-poaching efforts in South Africa to coastal zoning policy in California. David is a graduate of Middlebury College. Energy and environment David focuses on southern Utah, with an eye towards political coverage at the state and federal level, growth, public lands, energy, water and the environment. He covers the growth of the region, specifically St. George, which according to March 2018 estimates from the Census Bureau is the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States. David works in dual capacities as a half-time general assignment reporter helping to cover the region, while the other half of the time he tackles issues such as natural resources, water and growth. He works remotely, away from the main newsroom in Salt Lake City.