2022-2023

Detroit Free Press/Politifact

The Detroit Free Press primarily covers three counties in southeast Michigan, including robust coverage of the city of Detroit. Founded in 1831, it’s the oldest business in Detroit. Its role is to serve as watchdog and community convener. PolitiFact is a nonprofit newsroom housed at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida and is devoted to fact-checking American politics. Its mission is to give citizens the information they need to govern themselves in a democracy.

The Columbus Dispatch

The Dispatch's mission is to inform and engage Ohioans on issues important to helping them navigate daily life, and to hold public officials and business leaders accountable to the public. We emphasis enterprise and watchdog reporting. We take deep dives on important topics—opioids, suicide, fracking, income inequality, hazing, prescription-drug pricing, and ineffective and dangerous handling of arrest warrants to name a few. We initiated the Ohio News Organization collaborative of the eight largest newspapers a decade ago. We share content daily with non-profit and for-profit newsrooms and have worked together on joint reporting projects.

Block Club Chicago

Block Club Chicago is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Chicago’s neighborhoods. The news organization’s mission is to cover the city through a truly block-level lens that encourages people to get involved at a local level—whether that’s through campaigning for a local school council seat or trying a family-owned restaurant instead of a chain. Block Clubs seeks to build community through ground-level reporting of the city’s neighborhoods.

The Oaklandside/Berkeleyside

Berkeleyside is a 10-year-old city news site that provides granular coverage of Berkeley, CA, a high-profile city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our strength is in breaking news and in digging in deep on important issues of accountability. We have been successful in creating a loyal and highly engaged community of readers, and are seen as a model for digital local news nationally. We have recently converted to nonprofit status in order to create mission-driven newsrooms in more cities. Our first launch, in spring 2020, is in neighboring Oakland, a city of 420,000 in the throes of transformation.

The Arizona Republic

The Arizona Republic is the largest news outlet in the Southwest, primarily covering Arizona and, more specifically, the sprawling Metro Phoenix area (pop. 4.8 million). We lead the USA Today Network's coverage of the western US and are the flagship local newsroom of Gannett Co., Inc.'s 109 sites. The Republic's mission has been the same for 129 years: Connect and educate readers by providing fair and accurate coverage that reflects our community.

Anchorage Daily News

The Anchorage Daily News is the most-read newspaper and news site in Alaska. In 2017, the organization was purchased by an Alaska family with an interest in keeping the newspaper alive. The business turned around—by controlling costs, growing revenue, with a continued shift online, and especially, continued newsroom transformation that has emphasized producing quality journalism, serving audiences where they are, and adapting to changing platforms and reader habits and needs. Partnerships of all kinds have become critical for us.

Samantha Hogan

Samantha covered the statehouse, environment, and agriculture at The Frederick News-Post in Maryland. Her work has been recognized by the Maryland, Delaware and District of Columbia Press Association, including First Place for breaking news; First and Second Place for her pieces on growth and land use; First and Second Place for her environmental reporting. She is a former Washington Post intern, where she worked for the investigative and metro desks, and she is a graduate of American University, where she earned an M.A. in investigative reporting.

el Nuevo Herald

El Nuevo Herald is the second largest Spanish-language news outlet in the United States, covering local, national and international news for more than three decades, striving to be the most credible and dynamic source of news and information by producing journalism that makes a difference. El Nuevo Herald publishes in Spanish but also is routinely published in English in the Miami Herald. El Nuevo Herald shares a newsroom with the Miami Herald and they collaborate on a daily basis. Occasionally, the newspaper also collaborates with WLRN, an NPR affiliate that operates out of our newsroom. The newspaper’s coverage area extends well beyond the local community, reaching an audience of more than 357,000 in print and 3.9 million online. El Nuevo Herald’s digital readers stretch across South Florida, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Becky Dernbach

Becky Z. Dernbach reports for Sahan Journal, a news organization in Minnesota’s capital, St. Paul, that focuses on the state’s immigrants. Dernbach focuses her reporting on the education of Hmong, Somali, Latino and other immigrant students. Until recently she was an editorial fellow in the San Francisco office of Mother Jones, where she reported on labor and health care issues and fact-checked stories for the magazine and web. She graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School in 2019. While at Medill, she was a research assistant for the Chicago Tribune and published an investigation on Medicaid backlogs in the Chicago Sun-Times. Dernbach grew up outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and now calls Minneapolis home. Before she entered journalism, she worked in communications in the Twin Cities focused on racial justice issues. She’s also worked as a substitute teacher in the Minneapolis Public Schools. Dernbach is the author of a rhyming picture book about the 2008 foreclosure crisis, Fannie and Freddie.

Laurel Demkovich

Laurel Demkovich reports for The Spokesman-Review based in Spokane, Washington, and covers the Washington Legislature and state government. After graduating from Indiana University in May 2019, Demkovich completed an internship at The Washington Post where she covered cops and courts for the Post’s local desk. Demkovich also completed internships at the Tampa Bay Times and the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts, covering local government, breaking news, and general assignments. While at Indiana University, Demkovich served as managing editor of the school’s student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student. She has won several awards for her writing from the Indiana Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Indiana Collegiate Press Association named her Brook Baker Collegiate Journalist of the Year in 2019. She also won first place in feature writing from The Hearst Journalism Awards Program.