2024-2025

The New York Amsterdam News

The New York Amsterdam News was started in 1909 with a yearning to tell the stories of people of color in New York City, and has grown to become one of the most important Black newspapers in the country. It reported on the fight for equality during the Jim Crow era and the civil rights movement, and with a weekly paper and a robust news site, averaging 500,000 unique visitors a month, The New York Amsterdam News works to continue to magnify the issues that most deeply affect communities of color.

Uvalde Leader-News

The Uvalde Leader-News is a semi-weekly, locally-owned newspaper that traces its beginnings to 1879. The newspaper's primary coverage area is Uvalde County (population 27,000), which includes the city of Uvalde with 17,000 residents. Virtually all of our content, which includes extensive coverage of local governmental bodies, is produced by our five-person newsroom staff.

El Tecolote

El Tecolote began as a journalism project in a Raza Studies class at San Francisco State University’s newly created College of Ethnic Studies in 1970. Five decades later, El Tecolote continues to be free, circulating 10,000 copies biweekly. It is the longest running bilingual (English/Spanish) newspaper in the American Southwest. Our mission is to promote cultural arts, community media and civic engagement as a way of building healthy and empowered Latino communities. El Tecolote has a longstanding commitment to inform immigrants, which has proven crucial during a time of increasingly anti-immigrant sentiment.

New York Focus

New York Focus unmasks power in the Empire State. As the only nonprofit publication with an emphasis on state-level coverage, we produce deeply reported, investigative stories on the systems, decisions and actors that affect communities throughout New York. While most local accountability coverage is directed at New York City, we keep an eye on Albany — the notoriously corrupt and quietly impactful center of power throughout the state.

Vermont Public/VTDigger

VPR knits Vermonters together with its statewide network, as well as serving “Vermontophiles” in surrounding states, Canada and around the world. We provide a variety of local and NPR and other programming, including two daily news programs, “Morning Edition,” and “All Things Considered,” a daily talk show “Vermont Edition” and our people-powered “Brave Little State” project. Our reporters generate dozens of newscast items and in-depth stories a week. And we maintain a robust website. We are a respected institution in our state, and recognized for innovation in serving our mostly-rural audience. As Vermont’s daily newspapers and commercial broadcasters are struggling and reducing staff, VPR is determined to work with our partners to preserve great reporting in all parts of our state.

El Tímpano

El Tímpano—Spanish for “eardrum”—informs, engages and amplifies the voices of Latino and Mayan immigrants of Oakland and the wider Bay Area. Through innovative approaches to local journalism and civic engagement, El Tímpano surfaces community members’ stories and questions on local and national issues, provides news and information relevant to their needs, and investigates the concerns they bring to our attention.

NJ Spotlight News

NJ Spotlight News is a pioneering partnership between NJ Spotlight’s digital newsroom and NJ PBS, New Jersey's public television network. As the largest nonprofit newsroom dedicated to the state of New Jersey, NJ Spotlight News covers important issues in education, health care, public policy, politics and the environment on multiple platforms: traditional broadcast, digital reporting, social media content and live journalism roundtables.

VPM News/WMRA

VPM is a public media organization serving central Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley. Based in the state capitol of Richmond, the VPM News team covers statewide politics, local government, education, legal issues and more for our NPR and PBS stations and digital channels to reach 2 million people in our coverage area. As an independent, non-profit service, we strive to create and serve a more informed public.

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.

Elvis Menayese

Elvis Menayese of Cardiff, Wales, reports on the issues of race and equity in Charlotte, North Carolina, for NPR affiliate WFAE. Before teaming up with the WFAE, Menayese became one of the first Knight Summer Fellows interns for the Queens University News Service. As a fellow, he reported on grassroots initiatives that engaged Charlotte-area university students to mobilize vaccinations for COVID-19 among populations with “vaccine hesitancy,” including groups with historic distrust for government programs. He earned his bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Multimedia Storytelling with a concentration in Journalism. During his time at Queens, he was awarded “The Spirit of Community” award by Queens Knight School in recognition of his journalism work done throughout the community of Charlotte. Before transferring to Queens, Menayese attended Stetson University and competed as a collegiate athlete for their men’s soccer program where he was named to the ASUN All-Freshman team recognizing superior play from freshman student-athletes. As a reporter, Menayese continues to devote his time to covering underrepresented communities within the Queen City.