2021-2022

Sun Herald

The Sun Herald is a local news organization that produces a website, a newspaper and top-notch social media engagement. We may be small in numbers, but we're big on accountability and visual journalism that makes a difference. We've been serving our community for over 130 years and pride ourselves on investigative stories that no one else here will touch. We consistently win numerous state journalism awards and have been awarded McClatchy's highest journalism honor for four of the last five years.

Sahan Journal

Sahan Journal is a one-month-old, digital-only news website whose mission is to provide fair, groundbreaking coverage that illuminates issues affecting Minnesota immigrants and refugees, and to chronicle how these communities are changing and redefining what it means to be a Minnesotan. We are expanding our audience by partnering with ethnic news media in the state and Minnesota Public Radio News, one of the largest newsrooms in Minnesota.

Redding Record Searchlight

The Record Searchlight is a leading source for news and information north of Sacramento, California. We are part of the USA Today Network and have an ambitious newsroom. The Record Searchlight is tightly woven into its community and traces its modern history to the first edition of the Redding Record in 1938, when work began on the construction of Shasta Dam. For eight decades it has been the leading news source in Shasta County and neighboring rural counties in California’s vast but sparsely populated North State.

Ouray County Plaindealer

The Ouray County Plaindealer is a weekly newspaper. It’s been operating since 1877, since miners and other settlers came to this mountainous area of Colorado to seek their fortunes and make a living. Today, the Plaindealer’s readership includes locals whose families have been in the area for just as long as the newspaper, as well as newcomers who have moved to Ouray County after retiring or to work in the tourism industry. One of the notable things about the Plaindealer’s circulation is we deliver to 41 states—and are discovering that many of these subscribers are part-time residents or folks who wish to move here someday. The Plaindealer is the paper of record for Ouray County, and it’s what people rely on to know what happened at city and town council meetings, who said what at the school board retreat, and what happened to that bear that was wandering around town breaking into people’s houses. The goal is to provide The Plaindealer’s publishers, a couple who bought the newspaper in April 2019, are longtime Colorado journalists who left the largest newspaper in the western half of the state to purchase the weekly and bring quality journalism to the publication. They believe that even small, rural places deserve good journalism.

The Olympian

The Olympian is a 150-year-old news organization primarily covering Thurston County, population 270,000, and state government, since we are the state capital. We have transformed into a digital-first local news operation, feeding our website 12 hours a day—but we also continue to put out a daily print newspaper. We have three sister publications in the state: The News Tribune in the neighboring county, The Bellingham Herald, about 4 hours away, and The Tri-City Herald, about 6 hours away.

North Carolina Health News

NC Health News launched in January 2012 in response to the disappearance of people to explain this complicated topic. Our reporters each take on multiple roles. Topics include children’s health and Medicaid, oral health, mental health, rural healthcare, environmental health issues and legislative health issues. We’ve been a “virtual” newsroom, with reporters spread across the state. We have a weekly phone-in via Google Hangout and there’s almost constant communication via phone, text, email, Slack, etc. However, we’re renting a physical office in the Triangle to better accommodate meetings and provide a hub for operations.

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is an award-winning nonprofit digital newsroom based in Memphis and focused on the intersection of poverty, power and policy. Launched in April 2017 during the run-up to the 50th anniversary of Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, we frame the news from the perspective of the people King would have been aligned with had he not been assassinated. Through our three-year partnership with ProPublica, MLK50’s RFA fellows will have access to ProPublica training and may have the opportunity to collaborate on stories co-published with the national investigative reporting outlet.  

Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service

Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service (NNS) is an award-winning, online news outlet that provides balanced coverage of low-income minority neighborhoods in Milwaukee's central city through objective, professional reporting. We cover the issues most important to the people who live, work and serve in central-city Milwaukee, such as public safety, arts and recreation, economic development, education, health and wellness and housing.  

Las Cruces Sun-News

The Las Cruces Sun-News is the largest of seven Gannett newspapers in New Mexico. We facilitate news coverage as a network, which is important because we plan to use this position to report from all seven sites. As a network, we publish four daily newspapers and three twice-weekly newspapers.  

KUT

KUT is the NPR affiliate in Austin, operating out of the University of Texas’ flagship campus. We are an audience-focused, community-funded newsroom that focuses on city government, education, health care, politics and policy, energy and the environment, transportation and housing and affordability issues. We cover an 8-county region in Central Texas. Our mission is to provide our audience with the information they need to understand the world around them and engage with their communities on civic issues. We distribute our content through FM radio, our website, social media, podcasts and other platforms to reach our audience where they are.