2022-2023

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.

Kailey Broussard

Kailey Broussard is an accountability reporter covering Arlington, Texas for KERA/The Texas Newsroom. With a population of almost 400,000 people, Arlington is among the nation’s largest cities with no daily professional news presence. While pursuing her journalism degree at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, she reported on Arizona’s congressional delegation in Washington D.C., pedestrian fatalities in the Sun Belt, and Venezuelan refugees in Peru as well as U.S. disaster response through a 2019 Carnegie-Knight News21 reporting fellowship. She holds an MMC from Arizona State University and a B.A. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Originally from Louisiana, Broussard spent two years interning and freelancing for The Advocate in Baton Rouge and four years as a staff writer and editor for her student paper, The Vermilion. Her work has won recognition from the Society of Professional Journalists regions 11 and 12, Southeast Journalism Conference, Arizona Press Club, and Broadcast Education Association.

The Columbus Dispatch

The Columbus Dispatch has been serving central Ohio and beyond since 1871 with news and information about central Ohio, the state and the nation. As a capital city newspaper, news about how state government affects Ohioans is a focal point. The Dispatch shares its reporting with news organizations across the state.

Akron Beacon Journal

The Akron Beacon Journal provides comprehensive news coverage primarily for Summit and Stark counties in post-industrial Northeast Ohio. We frequently publish deep-dive enterprise reports on a wide variety of topics. These newsroom also leads the joint news efforts of GateHouse Media in Northeast Ohio, which includes numerous other daily media sites and weekly publications. Overall, GateHouse serves 10 counties in Northeast Ohio and a population of 1.2 million residents. We also work closely with GateHouse’s Columbus Dispatch for Statehouse and regional news coverage.

Abbey Marshall

Abbey Marshall covers Akron city government for the Akron Beacon Journal in Akron, Ohio.  Marshall is a 2020 graduate of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, where she studied on a full academic scholarship awarded to a student pursuing a career in reporting. Throughout her collegiate career, she completed two internships at The Columbus Dispatch as a metro reporter and web producer. She recently returned from Washington, D.C., where she covered breaking news as an intern at Politico. Having worked at a nonprofit in Mumbai, studied French and media in Aix-en-Provence and covered politics in the nation’s capital, she ultimately realized she missed the state she calls home and the fight for solid local journalism.

San Antonio Express-News

The San Antonio Express-News is a legacy daily whose roots go back to 1865. For many years, the paper was known as “the Voice of South Texas,” a motto that still appears on our masthead. San Antonio is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and we aim to be an authoritative and indispensable source of local and regional news. We aggressively cover City Hall, county government, the largest local school districts, courts and law enforcement. We also do ambitious enterprise reporting on the U.S.-Mexico border and U.S. immigration policy. Other coverage priorities include local arts and cultural institutions, high school sports, the San Antonio Spurs, and a burgeoning food and restaurant scene. Our editorial board maintains a robust opinion section – two pages per day of editorials, letters and op-ed pieces. We are part of Hearst Co. and share a Statehouse bureau in Austin and a Washington team with our sister paper, the Houston Chronicle.

Annie Blanks

Annie Blanks covers the thriving city of San Marcos, Texas for the San Antonio Express-News. Not only is she is serving her first year as a Report For America corps member, she’s also living and working for the first time in the great state of Texas. Annie has been a working journalist for more than five years, all of which have been spent in the Florida Panhandle. While in Florida, Annie spent three years with the Pensacola News Journal covering Santa Rosa County, which is the 11th fastest growing county in the state. She wrote about local government, environmental issues, courts and cops, education, and, yes, the occasional “Florida Man” story. Prior to that, she was a general assignment reporter for the Northwest Florida Daily News. Annie loves journalism and newspapers, and is very much enjoying her newest career adventure in Texas.

Hadley Hitson

Hadley Hitson covers the rural South and the Black Belt communities in Alabama for the Montgomery Advertiser, a daily newspaper in the state capital. Hadley previously worked as a freelance education reporter for Fortune magazine, while the media outlet launched its first annual list of the Best Online MBA Programs. As a Fortune editorial intern, she authored articles on the technology, business, and politics beats. Hadley is a graduate of the University of Mississippi, where she was the managing editor of the university’s award-winning, student-run newspaper, The Daily Mississippian. She has also interviewed a member of the presidential Cabinet, covered the relocation of a 114-year-old Confederate monument, and appeared on the The Paul Finebaum Show for the SEC Network.

Kansas City PBS

Kansas City PBS has a long tradition of public service that has laid the foundation for expanding its news gathering relationship with our community. Our content platforms — television, radio, digital, social media and educational outreach — exist to serve the diversity of our region. We explore complicated issues with thoughtful reporting. We share the diverse stories of people, places, and progress in our community. We advance conversations through community engagement and social media. Specifically, Kansas City PBS operates four KCPT-related public television channels; KTBG 90.9 The Bridge, an NPR-affiliated AAA music station; and FlatlandKC, an online digital magazine; in addition to social media and community events.  

Cami Koons

Cami Koons covers rural affairs in the communities surrounding Kansas City for Kansas City PBS. Koons has served as a volunteer features reporter for The Eudora Times, a paper dedicated to bringing news back to a small Kansas town. Reporting for The Times taught Koons the importance of community journalism which led her to Report for America. Throughout the pandemic, Koons has worked with Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health as a communications intern to help inform her community about COVID safety and local guidelines. Koons was also heavily involved with 90.7 FM KJHK, the campus radio station at the University of Kansas, where she produced video, audio, print and on-air content. In 2020, Koons received local and national awards for her reporting with KJHK and for her weekly French radio show. Koons spent a semester in France and is known to show up to gatherings armed with baguette, cheese and a playlist of French tunes.