2024-2025

Emily Kenny

Emily Kenny is photojournalist for Spectrum News in Syracuse, New York covering agriculture and food production. In 2021, she graduated with her master’s degree in photojournalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and, before that, she graduated from Buena Vista University as a dual major in digital media and psychology. The agriculture beat made sense for Emily as she grew up on her family farm in Schaller, Iowa. She has worked on multiple long-term stories: her master’s project about women and their insecurities, and the other focusing on her family’s farm. Emily resides in Syracuse, New York with her two dogs, Chanel and Athena.

WFAE

WFAE is the NPR station serving a 32-county listening area in the Charlotte region. Our mission is to produce journalism that informs, enriches and inspires. For 32 years, people across the Carolinas have relied on WFAE to offer comprehensive and in-depth reporting on the topics they need to understand, whether of local, national, or international importance. Acclaimed NPR programs and our local show, Charlotte Talks, continue to be cornerstones of our trusted on-air brand. Our increasingly diverse community consumes content through our broadcast signals, online at WFAE.org, through smart speakers, newsletters, podcasts and social media. Stories produced by our staff often air on NPR stations across the country as well as on BBC news.  

Patricia Ortiz

Patricia Ortiz is the bilingual reporter at Enlace Latino NC, covering state and midterm elections, municipal and sheriff elections, and immigration issues affecting the community, including workers at meat processing plants, farms and construction sites. Ortiz is a Colombian-American journalist, with more than 16 years of experience as a reporter in Spanish-language written media in North Carolina. She emigrated to the United States in 1999 seeking a better life and professional opportunity, which came in 2004 when she began working as a local reporter for Mi Gente newspaper in Charlotte. Under the supervision of the general editor Rafael Prieto, Ortiz won her first journalistic awards for articles on immigration, politics, and police investigations. During her professional career in North Carolina, Ortiz has had the opportunity to work as a correspondent for AOL Latino – Nuestra Voces, Qué Pasa-Charlotte Newspaper, and La Noticia, and most recently was part of the team at Enlace Latino NC. As a reporter who has written local and state news, features, and stories, Ortiz has had the opportunity to be very close to the Hispanic and immigrant community in North Carolina, and to experience the changes and achievements over the years, as well as the constant challenges in a southern state.

Joshua Yeager

Joshua Yeager covers environmental and health issues in Bakersfield and Kern County, California. He previously worked for the Visalia Times Delta, where his reporting exposed inequalities in Tulare County towns suffering contaminated and insufficient drinking water. He won a first-place California News Papers Association award for his coverage of Sierra Nevada’s historic 2020 wildfire season. An avid Sierra hiker, he has recently investigated forest management policy oversights that have resulted in the death of thousands of giant sequoia trees.

Rachel Crumpler

Rachel Crumpler reports on gender and prison health and health inequities for North Carolina Health News, a nonprofit news service that covers health care in the state. She is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, where she majored in journalism and minored in history and social and economic justice. As an intern for The Triangle Business Journal, she wrote daily stories about the economy and businesses in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Crumpler also wrote more than 50 stories on events and developments impacting the campus community for her college newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel. She was named a 2020-21 Hearst investigative reporting award winner for her data-driven story spotlighting funding cuts at local health departments across North Carolina and the impact it had on Covid responses. Crumpler’s work has appeared in The News and Observer, WRAL, Greensboro News & Record, NC Policy Watch and other publications. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys crossing items off her bucket list, such as going skydiving to celebrate her college graduation.

Grant Ritchey

Grant Ritchey covers education and the growing workforce for Knox Pages, a digital news organization serving residents of Knox County, in central Ohio. Prior to joining Knox Pages, Ritchey was a general assignment reporter for the Ashland Times-Gazette based in Ashland, Ohio, for which he reported and wrote features on sex trafficking, catalytic converter thefts, county and local government, crime, courts, new businesses, and on important and overlooked members of the community. While enrolled at Ohio University, Ritchey worked at the student-run news publication, The Post. There, he gained experience in meeting coverage, breaking news, investigative reporting, and feature writing. Ritchey interned at The Borgen Project, a nonprofit that addresses global poverty, where he wrote reports on internet access, clean drinking water and the steps being taken toward solving those issues.

100 Days in Appalachia

A digital news publication, 100 Days in Appalachia has a mission to share the diverse stories of the 13 states that make up this region. Working with local voices to apply a cultural lens to what’s happening here, it shares what that means for the rest of the world.

Mariah Rush

Mariah Rush covers the South and West sides of Chicago for the Chicago Sun-Times. Originally from South Bend, Indiana, she graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2021. Rush was most recently a national real-time reporter for McClatchy News, covering the midwest region. She has previously reported for the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Tampa Bay Times and has served as the Managing Editor for Notre Dame's independent newspaper, The Observer. Rush has written about everything from news deserts in America, to the policing of Black teens in Illinois, to the phenomenon that is Wordle. In her leisure time, she can be found consuming TV and reading detective novels with her dog, Simi.

Ashley Winters

Ashley Winters is reporting for the St. Louis American, covering news impacting African Americans in the St. Louis metro area which includes education, business and entertainment. Winters is from St. Louis, Missouri and attended Columbia College Chicago, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism with a concentration in Magazine Article Writing. After graduation, her roots called her back home to be the watchdog for Black and Brown communities impacted by racial and social/ economic disparities in the St. Louis region. Winters has worked for local media outlets including the Nine Network of Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio, St. Louis Magazine, the St. Louis American Newspaper, and Northsider Newspaper. She is a two-time award recipient of the Excellence in Poverty Journalism Award. In 2019 she published her first children's book, called Memories Of A Bunny Rabbit, and received a Mission Attempt award. She has volunteered for the St. Louis City School District teaching fourth- through sixth-graders journalism, showing the importance of Black voices, and telling stories about our communities. Winters' latest project is gardening; she plans to donate fresh produce to poor Black and brown communities to help fight food apartheid in the St.  Louis region.

Quinn Gablicki

Quinn Glabicki covers environment and the impacts of climate change in Western Pennsylvania for PublicSource. Before joining PublicSource, Quinn worked as a freelance photographer and journalist covering environment, politics and breaking news. He previously worked with PublicSource to publish long-term work documenting the intersection of industrial pollution, public health, and gun violence in Clairton, Pennsylvania. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Quinn graduated from Haverford College with a degree in political science where he focused on populist politics and rising authoritarianism in post-soviet states.