2021-2022

Orion Donovan-Smith

Orion Donovan-Smith covers Congress and Washington, D.C., for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington. He worked as the Investigative Reporting Workshop fellow on the documentary “Plastic Wars,” a Frontline investigation into recycling and the plastics industry. Prior to that, he was an intern and later a part-time producer at the NPR program “1A” in 2019, while finishing a master’s degree in journalism from American University. Earlier in the program, he worked with the investigative team and as a general assignment reporter at The Washington Post, covering immigration. Before turning to journalism, he worked on international development programs in Central Africa. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington.

Rebecca Liebson

Rebecca Liebson reports for The State in Columbia, S.C. and focuses on public and substandard housing in the state capital. Rebecca Liebson was part of the New York Times’ inaugural fellowship class. She worked for The Weekly, The Times’ first-ever television news series, helping to produce episodes about a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes, the culture of sexual harassment in the world of yoga and more. Liebson has also written for the metro desk where she led The Times’ breaking news coverage of an anti-Semitic attack on a Rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York. Before she arrived at The Times, Liebson held internships at NBC, The New York Post and WSHU Public Radio. She graduated from Stony Brook University in 2019. Her work for The Statesman student newspaper earned her a Hearst Award for Enterprise Writing as well as the title of Best College News Reporter from the Press Club of Long Island for two consecutive years.

Tobie Perkins

Tobie Nell Perkins reports for The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C. where she focuses on struggling Chester County, which is still reeling from decades of textile mill closures. Before coming to South Carolina, Perkins spent the last year writing feature and long-form stories for Fresh Take Florida, a news service based at the University of Florida where she graduated with a degree in journalism. Her stories, distributed through Fresh Take Florida, have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, the Kentucky Herald-Leader and more. She has written for WUFT.org, the University of Florida’s NPR and PBS affiliate, since 2018. Tobie grew up near  Philadelphia, PA. She was the 2020 recipient of the John Paul Jones Jr. Award for Magazine Writing. Perkins was one of two nominees from the University of Florida to be chosen to compete for the National Hearst Award both in Feature Writing and Sports Writing. And she was a varsity member of the university’s Equestrian Team.

Humera Lodhi

Humera Lodhi reports for The Kansas City Star where she works as part of a team focusing on gun violence and uses her data skills to offer a deeper understanding of firearms statistics. She is a writer, programmer, multimedia creator and proud Missourian who has reported for various Missouri outlets such as the St. Louis Post Dispatch and KCUR on civil rights legislation, social media extremism and neglected public infrastructure. She was part of an award-winning research team that created a digital database mapping the British suppression of the African slave trade, created and produced a Snapchat series covering the midterm elections for Raycom Media and built an app for journalists that uncovered hidden relationships between topics using artificial intelligence. Lodhi graduated from the University of Missouri with degrees in journalism and statistics in 2019. Afterwards, she pursued a master’s degree in data journalism from Columbia University.

Kaitlin Washburn

Kaitlin Washburn reports for The Kansas City Star where she is part of a team examining gun violence in Missouri. As part of the team, Washburn reports in-depth on the politics of guns in the Missouri Legislature. This is her second tour of duty with Report for America. For the past year as an RFA member, she covered the omnipresent agriculture industry in California’s Central Valley for The Sun-Gazette. Prior to that, Washburn covered campaign finance and dark money for the Center for Responsive Politics, recreational cannabis and questionable state health care for The Oregonian and state politics for the Columbia Missourian. In 2019, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. At MU, her emphasis was in investigative reporting, and she spent three years as a researcher for Investigative Reporters and Editors.

Kristina Karisch

Kristina Karisch reports for The Modesto Bee and focuses on economic development and its impacts in Stanislaus County and the Northern San Joaquin Valley. She has covered politics and policy as an intern at The Washington Monthly and for the Medill News Service. She has also reported on local news for the West Seattle Herald, with a focus on transportation. Karisch graduated from Northwestern University in March with a degree in journalism and political science. She spent her time there reporting for The Daily Northwestern, where she was the paper’s city editor and managing editor. Karisch, who was born in Copenhagen to Austrian parents, grew up in Montreal and Denver and has been living in Seattle since 2016.

Ledger-Enquirer

The Ledger-Enquirer is a digital-first, daily local newspaper based in Columbus, Ga., focused on bringing our community engaging and actionable news. We are composed of a small but dedicated crew of journalists. Our veteran journalists are the foundation of our newsroom with valuable contacts built up from years of reporting, the ability to write on any topic in a thorough and accurate fashion and institutional knowledge of our practices and standards. With deep community ties, these reporters have earned first place in recent Georgia APME awards in beat reporting, non-deadline reporting and education coverage. Our younger journalists are all skilled across multimedia forms and often have things to teach their more veteran counterparts. They lift the newsroom spirit, challenge the status quo and ask questions about the community that have long been glossed over. Each day, we focus on sharing fresh content with our readers in the form that best suits them — be it our website, social media platforms or print products.

The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead

The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead has a proud history of serving its audience critical information for more than 130 years. The news organization, the largest in North Dakota, serves community members in both North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, The Forum is continually recognized with awards by professional news organizations for excellence in news, sports, feature reporting, design, advertising, opinion writing, editorial cartoons and photojournalism. The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead is part of the Forum News Service, which gathers and distributes content from news organizations throughout the region.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is the product of the 1995 merger of the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel, newspapers that date to 1882 and 1837 respectively. After two transitions, we are part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, which includes 10 other newsrooms in Wisconsin and 109 newsrooms nationwide —a number that will grow with the Gannett-GateHouse merger. While we regularly do stories with national interest and impact, our focus is fiercely local. We cover Milwaukee, southeastern Wisconsin and the state like no one else does – or can. We are most proud of the day-to-day reporting that chronicles our community, informs our residents and holds officials accountable for what they do. We expose wrongdoing. We highlight programs that work. We engage the community. We help lead the search for solutions.

Mission Local

With more than ten years of experience, Mission Local is more than a neighborhood news site. We are a local news site that covers city-wide issues from the ground up. We are digital-first, led by a Latina and focused on producing trustworthy journalism. There are no shortcuts to the latter. We don’t aggregate. We make phone calls, read documents, pound the pavement, attend meetings. We talk to people on the street.