2021-2022

Cedar Attanasio

Cedar Attanasio covers the New Mexico Legislature for The Associated Press where he concentrates on education and poverty. “I was born in a teepee and grew up off the grid,” he says. Among the pine—and, yes, cedar—forests of Northern New Mexico, Attanasio didn't have a television. "The first news story I ever saw was in a copy of Newsweek. I was kind of news starved, scrounging through old stacks of National Geographic," he says, adding “I have organized three community circuses. The first was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I taught teens my age how to stilt walk.” A New Mexico native, Attanasio covered immigration for The AP from its bureau in El Paso, Texas and also covered the mass terrorist shooting in the border city. He’s a graduate of the Santa Fe Tutorial School, the Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong and Middlebury College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in geography and Spanish.

Nada Samir Atieh

Nada Atieh is a reporter for the Redding Searchlight in Redding, California, which covers areas north of Sacramento. She focuses on education, childhood trauma and the achievement gap. An Arab-American journalist from Dallas, Texas, Atieh has been working as a journalist in the Middle East since 2017. She has reported on the military escalation in northwest Syria and the humanitarian crisis created by the Syrian civil war within Syria. Previously, she trained with Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), where she coordinated the awards distribution at the 2018 annual conference. She has reported about the economic climate in Jordan for Venture magazine. Atieh has also covered the Jordanian government’s initiative to bring employment services to refugee camps, the impact of tax hikes on food producers in Jordan, and the growth of air connectivity throughout the Middle East. She is fluent in conversational Arabic and proficient in Modern Standard Arabic. She holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Arlington, where she studied broadcast journalism and communications.

Milton Arline

Milton “Trey” Arline reports for The Daily Herald in Arlington, Illinois, where he focuses on central Lake County and its underserved, underreported minority community. Arline is a graduate of the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). He has been consistently writing stories for his school’s newspaper, The Scarlet and Gray Free Press, since he went to UNLV in late 2018, with stories ranging from politics to health, jobs to entertainment. His work can also be found in The Nevada Independent, where he was an intern, and has worked on behalf of PBS, The Associated Press, and NBC on a short-term basis. Born in southern Georgia, Arline grew up a military brat and has lived in Germany, Portugal and Turkey.

Kassidy Arena

Kassidy Arena covers the Iowa statehouse for Iowa Public Radio, focusing on undercovered issues of interest to the booming Latino population. She helped cover global human rights violations and conditions during her internship at RUIDO Photo in Barcelona, Spain. She was a host, producer, and reporter for KBIA, the NPR member station in Columbia, Missouri. During the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kassidy continued to report remotely for Missouri News Network about state issues and politics. Kassidy graduated from the University of Missouri/Columbia with a degree in convergence radio reporting and producing in May 2020. She is originally from Berkeley, California but grew up in Omaha, Nebraska.

Hibah Ansari

Hibah Ansari reports for Sahan Journal, a news organization based in Minnesota’s capital, St. Paul, that focuses on the state’s immigrants. At Sahan Journal, Ansari covers immigration policy, especially affecting Hmong, Somali, and Latino communities. Born and raised in Wisconsin, she holds a master of science degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism student. She is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Previously, she was a reporting intern for USA Today Network in Wisconsin and Fox Cities Magazine in northeast Wisconsin. She has also contributed to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Alex Acquisto

Alex has been a reporter at the Bangor Daily News in Maine, first covering the state’s lobster and tourism industries on the midcoast, then leading the paper’s metro coverage in Bangor, before finally reporting on Maine politics in the state capital. She has uncovered problems with the Legislature’s mandatory sexual harassment training that led to the ousting of its trainer, and her reporting on the deaths of children in Maine, prompted a legislative investigation into the state’s over-burdened child services agency. Her work has earned her several first place awards in education, news analysis, and law enforcement reporting from the Maine Press Association. Born and raised in Kentucky, Alex first spent time in Maine as a canoe instructor and returned to study writing. She has also reported for the Kennebunk Post and the Forecaster, and she was a teaching artists at The Telling Room, a non-profit organization that teaches storytelling skills to Maine youth. Alex is a graduate of Western Kentucky University and the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies. Watchdog reporting on public health in Kentucky Alex focuses on the region’s health problems, exposes flaws in Kentucky’s social services programs, gives voice to people struggling to care for themselves and their loved ones and offers potential solutions to problems that have plagued the area for a century. In particular, Alex serves as a watchdog of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, a government agency that wields enormous power over Kentucky’s most vulnerable citizens with  little scrutiny and transparency. She is based in Lexington, but spends extensive time in the Capitol bureau, especially during legislative sessions, and reports from communities in Eastern Kentucky.  She is directed by the newspaper’s deputy editor for accountability and engagement, who has overseen numerous award-winning projects and guides the paper’s coverage of state government and Appalachian Kentucky.