2022-2023

Athens Banner-Herald

Athens Banner-Herald is an under 20,000 circulation newspaper in Athens, Georgia, owned by Gannett. The newspaper traces its history to the Southern Banner newspaper that first published on March 20, 1832. In 1921, the newspaper merged with the Athens Herald to become the Athens Banner-Herald.

KOSU

KOSU is a member-supported public radio network, and its broadcast signals cover two-thirds of Oklahoma with a heavy rural focus. This news organization, including a news site, delivers award-winning local news and NPR news. KOSU provides a place for civil discourse through in-depth reporting on agriculture, rural issues, Indigenous affairs, education and health care and conversation.

Lily Burris

Lily Burris covers wealth and poverty in Kentucky for the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting in Louisville. Prior to joining the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, Burris worked as the tornado recovery reporter for WKMS-FM in Murray, Kentucky on a Corporation for Public Broadcasting grant. Her work focused on the communities across west and central Kentucky that were devastated by a sudden tornado outbreak in December 2021 and their efforts to come back from the losses they faced. She started in journalism as a reporter at her college newspaper, the College Heights Herald at Western Kentucky University. By her senior semester in college, Burris was the editor-in-chief of the publication, where she also worked as assignment editor, administration reporter, and general assignment reporter. In college, Burris also interned for Louisville Public Media, attended the Danish School of Media and Journalism, and won the Jon Fleischaker Freedom of Information Award from Kentucky Press Association at the collegiate level for her work on a piece focused on sexual misconduct records and Title IX.

Anna Pope

Anna Pope covers agriculture and rural communities for KOSU, an NPR affiliate in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Born and raised in Oklahoma, Pope holds a bachelor’s degree in multimedia journalism from Oklahoma State University, where she reported for the university’s paper and later became its news editor. Pope interned at KOSU public radio, and was a 2021 Community Fellow with the Inasmuch Foundation, a nonprofit with the goal of improving the quality of life for Oklahomans.

Mirtha Donastorg

Mirtha Donastorg reports for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She is a journalist with experience in TV, digital and radio, and was most recently an associate producer at CNN Digital where she helped curate multiple homepage platforms, as well as craft breaking news alerts viewed by millions daily. As a researcher for CNN, Donastorg fact-checked scripts from correspondents all over the globe and most notably, reported on the conviction of an abusive Catholic priest. Outside of work, she shares her love of soul music from around the world as a host of a weekly two-hour local radio show. Donastorg grew up in Auburn, Alabama. She’s a proud alumna of North Carolina State University, and is fluent in Spanish and French.

The Texas Newsroom/KERA

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.

Anya Szerzenie

Anya Sczerzenie is currently the education reporter for the HenricoCitizen, where she covers the school system with a focus on educationalequity. She previously did freelance work in Northern Virginia, covering awide range of topics from historical houses to the DC metro’s Silver Lineopening to the local schools. She is a graduate of Virginia CommonwealthUniversity where she was a contributing writer for the student newspaper,the Commonwealth Times, and held an internship with RVA Mag-- where shecovered local culture and LGBTQ topics.

Eric Standing

Eric Standing’s history with the Journal began in January 2022 when he began writing a humor column. His first experience with paid writing inspired him to want to pursue journalism as a full time career. The idea of taking pictures of people, places and events while telling their stories has appealed to him since he was a child. Standing is a dual citizen of Canada and America as well as Canadian born First Nations person with treaty rights. He occasionally covers stories in Saskatchewan for Eagle Feather News as well as working for the Journal. In May of 2022, Standing participated in the Indigenous Communications Arts (INCA) Summer Institute in Journalism. Through the First Nations University of Canada, Standing was able to train with professional journalists from CBC, CTV, APTN, Eagle Feather News and the Canadian Press. Standing considers himself an outdoorsman and his passions include hunting and fishing. His connections to his family and the land in North Dakota helped his decision to stay.

Loan-Anh Pham

Loan-Anh Pham is a bilingual education reporter at San José Spotlight, a nonprofit newsroom inthe heart of Silicon Valley. At Spotlight, Pham covers K-12 schools and aims to highlighteducational inequities in one of the nation’s most expensive areas. She previously reported onAsian American issues at AsAmNews and #IAmNotAVirus, and was a Spotlight intern coveringVietnamese communities. A recent UCLA graduate, Pham worked at the Daily Bruin, reportingon issues like immigration and gun violence. She obtained degrees in communication, publicaffairs and gender studies. Her fondest journalism memories include working as editor-in-chiefof her high school newspaper, The Union. She loves Vietnamese coffee, overfilled bookshelvesand puns.

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a Pittsburgh native who graduated from Chatham University in 2017 after studyingCommunications and Political Science with a focus in journalism. Over the years she has written forThe Student Guide to Pittsburgh, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The New Pittsburgh Courier,PublicSource, Vice, The PLS Reporter, PINJ News, and BlackPittsburgh.com. Irvin-Mitchell is excited tolearn more about the tech industry in Pittsburgh and do her part to make information on rapidlychanging trends accessible to the general public.