2020-2021

Ciara McCarthy

Ciara McCarthy has worked as an intern for the Marshall Project and a researcher at the Guardian U.S., where she contributed to “The Counted,” an Emmy-nominated project on police killings. She later worked as a staff community reporter for Patch, covering neighborhoods in Manhattan. In college, she was the editor-in-chief of the Daily Northwestern, the respected student-run daily of Northwestern University. In her first year as an RFA corps member, McCarthy covered local government for the Victoria Advocate. In her second year, she will focus on rural public health. Covering rural public health In her first year, Ciara covered City Hall for the Victoria Advocate, the second-oldest newspaper in Texas, a 172 year old, family-owned daily newspaper serving the rural communities in and around Victoria near the Gulf of Mexico. During this time, she also helped her newsroom maintain continuing coverage of Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts in rural communities overshadowed by Houston flooding and calamities elsewhere. In her second year, Ciara shifted her coverage gap and focuses on rural public health issues in Victoria County and the Crossroads region, focusing on how local petrochemical plants impact residents’ health, along with other issues specific to the state of rural health in the area.

ChrisAnna Mink

ChrisAnna Mink is a pediatric infectious diseases specialist and has been a freelance journalist. For more than two decades, she served her community as a successful physician, including working as the Medical Director of at the K.I.D.S. Foster Care Clinic as part of Harbor UCLA Medical Center and as a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. In 2014 she began writing more about about health and ultimately decided to become a health journalist. She got a M.A. from University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and has written about child health issues for the California Health Report and University of Southern California’s Center for Health Journalism. Covering children’s health in the Central Valley, California ChrisAnna focuses on children’s health, both physical and mental, and explores how the paper can inform, educate and help bring about a healthier community. Childhood asthma, obesity, and food insecurity are big issues in Modesto and throughout the Central Valley. Stanislaus, and nearby Tuolumne County, also are among the California counties with the highest number of emergency room visits by children with dental issues, according to the California Department of Public Health. More than 300,000 kids in the Central Valley live in poverty. She works in concert with local schools, state and county health and environmental agencies and local hospitals and a new care center to identify current issues and solutions in children’s health. 

Camalot Todd

Camalot reported on community issues in Las Vegas, including a long-term project on underage sex trafficking, for the Las Vegas Sun and its sister publication, Las Vegas Weekly. For the Sun, she wrote a pathbreaking investigative piece called, “Children on the Cusp: The transition from foster care to adulthood is leaving some behind.” The Nevada Press Association identified this work as the best investigative story of the year and named Camalot the Best Community Reporter of 2017. She also worked as a reporter for KUNV radio. She is a graduate of University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Mental health issues in Buffalo and western New York state According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in five adults live with a mental illness and just over 20 percent of children have had a seriously debilitating mental disorder. Unprecedented changes are roiling the mental health system including Medicaid and Affordable Care Act redesign, and a historic opioid epidemic. The changes mean local governments, health care providers, etc. are constantly having to adapt in order to meet new standards. On top of that, in western New York, there’s a shortage in mental health funding, beds and workforce. Cam focuses on mental health stigma and the state of mental health care in western New York, specifically in Erie, Niagara and Chautauqua counties. With Buffalo being a border city, there’s also the opportunity to look at mental health awareness and treatment in Canada, a country that prides itself on the way it approaches the topic. Spectrum News Buffalo provides training for shooting, editing and using newsroom software, and Cam will have the opportunity to participate in regular storytelling workshops. Additionally, Cam works in conjunction with the Networks Digital team to produce content for distribution on relevant social media channels.

Becky Jacobs

Becky worked as a crime and courts reporter in Northwest Indiana for the Post-Tribune, a suburban newspaper of the Chicago Tribune. She previously covered courts, crime and general assignment at the Grand Forks Herald, where she was named the North Dakota Newspaper Association rookie reporter of the year in 2016. She also was a Dow Jones News Fund copy editing intern at the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minnesota, and interned with The Local, an English news outlet in Stockholm, Sweden. She got her B.S. from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Covering the status of women in Utah Becky covers the status of women in Utah. Utah is routinely labeled as the worst state for women because it has the nation’s widest wage gap, a low college graduation rate for women and fewer women leaders in politics and business. (That number dropped from 11.4 to 6.4 percent since 2014.) From childcare access to cultural pressures — primarily associated with Mormon culture — there is some important targeted research happening in this area. Becky translates the data and ties it to personal narratives to give more context and attention to women’s issues.

Arielle Dreher

Prior to covering public health in eastern Washington state, Arielle worked as a staff reporter and writer for the Jackson Free Press, the alternative weekly in Mississippi. She covered state government, earning numerous awards including several first place Green Eyeshade awards. She has also received awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Awards and the Associated Press for feature writing, politics reporting, business reporting, courts reporting and public service. More recently, splitting her time between Pasco, Washington and Andalucía, Spain, Arielle has written about rural America and happiness for 74 Million, covered local business for the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business and wrote about mental health and reproductive health for the Free Press. She received her B.A. from Azusa Pacific University and her M.A. from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Public health in eastern Washington state Arielle reports on health and social issues in Spokane and the surrounding region as part of the paper’s Metro Desk team. That includes covering breaking news and diving into issue stories about key health topics, such as opioid abuse and access to care; social issues, such as the need for more foster families; and medical research and innovation from the area’s universities. She works with the Review’s government affairs editor, who is skilled at guiding novice reporters and helping them look beyond the process to find important issues and compelling human stories that will engage readers. As part of a small newsroom team, Arielle has the chance to tackle a wide variety of assignments and gets hands-on training with our digital team.

Angie Jackson

Born and raised in metro Detroit, Angie has been a reporter for the Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., where she covered crime and criminal justice. She has embedded in neighborhoods that have long struggled with gun violence, provided an in-depth look at a mass shooting that left seven police officers dead or wounded and shed light on suicides among firefighters and first responders. She previously worked in Michigan at the Grand Rapids Press and the Traverse City Record-Eagle. Angie is a graduate of Michigan State University. Covering formerly incarcerated citizens and their families Angie covers the issues of formerly incarcerated citizens in Detroit. Michigan’s prison population is coming down from a record high in 2007 due in part to a combination of relatively fewer new prisoners and a slightly higher parole rate. The recidivism rate has steadily declined in the last 20 years. This is good news, but what happens when you’re out of prison? How do you find work? Many employers won’t hire individuals who were formerly incarcerated. If you can find work, there are still many obstacles to building a good life —transportation, substance abuse and job training are just a few. The future of each returning citizen is key to an equitable recovery for the city of Detroit. This unique reporting role will focus on storytelling, myth/stigma-busting, resource-building and community engagement. The audience for this beat includes the formerly incarcerated, their families, people in positions to help and the community at large. Angie speaks to people in each constituency to define their needs and the best way to reach them, as well as leaders and clients of several existing nonprofits for returning citizens about the problems they face. The Detroit Free Press wants to know their stories. We also want to know how to help. Angie thinks holistically about what audiences need and how to reach them.

Amelia Ferrell Knisely

Amelia examines poverty and its ramifications in West Virginia for The Mountain State Spotlight. She previously covered similar issues for the Charleston Gazette-Mail, and she covered education and children’s issues for The Tennessean in Nashville. She has written extensively about homelessness and poverty, and she previously served as editor of The Contributor, a nonprofit newspaper sold by people experiencing homelessness. Her writing on the plight of migrant tomato farmers was nominated for an international news award. Originally from West Virginia, Amelia started her journalism career as a freelance journalist in her hometown. She holds a B.A. from Shepherd University in West Virginia and a master’s degree from Marshall University. Poverty in southern West Virginia Boone County had the highest per-capita income in West Virginia a few years ago, mostly because of the salaries paid to coal miners, but as the coal industry collapsed, that money went away. The region’s economic and social problems mean southern West Virginia is a difficult place to make a living and to raise children. At the same time, early childhood education and adult education and training, important ingredients for individual employment and for a region’s economic prosperity, get squeezed out of coverage by the legitimate demands of covering traditional K-12 schools and colleges and universities. Amelia’s reporting focuses on the large areas of a population left with too few jobs, with a specific focus toward educational opportunities at all levels.

St. Louis Public Radio

St. Louis Public Radio, a news organization and NPR member station, reaches half a million people on air, online and at events in the St. Louis region of Missouri and Illinois, with additional stations in Quincy, Ill., and Rolla and Lebanon, Mo. St. Louis Public Radio is committed to broadcasting and publishing material in the public interest to provide a free and accurate flow of information for people in the region. Its mission is to inform and provide a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures for a more inspired and engaged public.

CALmatters

About the News Organization: CALmatters is a nonpartisan, nonprofit journalism venture committed to explaining how California’s state Capitol works and why it matters. Environmental regulation, education, health care, criminal justice, economic inequality — the debates on these issues and others have a profound impact on the lives of 38 million Californians and beyond. Our team of experienced journalists, with the time and resources to dig deep, is committed to meaningfully informing Californians about the players, politics, and interests that shape the issues that affect their lives. Over the past year CALmatters set out to continue building a nonprofit platform that would reach a large and influential audience with information and tools that hold politicians accountable and empower Californians to participate meaningfully in their democracy.

KERA / The Texas Newsroom

NPR and Texas public radio stations collaborated to form the Texas News Hub. It’s the first step in a systemwide collaborative project to create a nationwide virtual public radio newsroom of 1,000-plus journalists. The collaboration includes two daily, hour-long statewide programs (Texas Standard and Think) and will soon include six daily statewide newscasts, and a statewide digital news desk. The Hub is working to hire and train freelance and small station reporters to provide news service to underserved communities in the state’s news deserts.