2025-2026

Alex Frick

Before joining the Port Townsend and Jefferson County Leader, Alex Frick studied journalism at the University of Florida. As a non-traditional student, Frick returned to school to pursue his reignited passion for storytelling and discovered journalism. While in college, he interned at the Leader, where he experienced firsthand the challenges of providing consistent and sufficient, high-quality local news coverage in rural areas. Frick was also one of 24 students from the United States selected by CNN to participate in a 10-day global crisis simulation in Abu Dhabi, joining 120 students from 20 countries to experience fast-paced reporting under pressure. Prior to his return to school, Frick worked in automotive management, following in his father’s footsteps where he developed valuable leadership, communication, and problem-solving skills. He now brings that same drive, curiosity, and passion to covering real-life stories and pressing issues in Jefferson County.

Theo Wells-Spackman

Theo Wells-Spackman covers economic inequality in Vermont for VTDigger, where he previously reported on education, floods, and general news as an intern. Prior to joining that newsroom, he was production intern for the Trenton Project, a documentary series diving into the local history and culture of Trenton, New Jersey. He has also worked as a research intern for Facing History and Ourselves. His journalistic work began in high school, when he worked on a documentary covering gender bias in Vermont public schools for the program “What’s the Story?” He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Princeton University, where he was a producer and editor for the podcast section at the Daily Princetonian. He is from Weybridge, Vermont.

Alex Klaus

Alex Klaus is a graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit with a degree in urban studies and public history. In 2024, she covered education with a focus on literacy intervention efforts in the Detroit Public Schools Community District as an intern at Chalkbeat Detroit. She covered over 80 public meetings as a Detroit Documenter and served as a mentor in the network's "Docu-Mentors" program, building a video library of tutorials equipping other Documenters with a variety of tools to confidently cover meetings. As a freelancer for Outlier Media, she pitched a solutions-oriented policing and public safety newsletter in 2022 that became Streetlight Detroit. When she's not covering a public meeting, she's exploring nature preserves, cooking, baking, or hanging out with friends and her cat Dottie.

Dylan Eubank

Dylan Eubank is a 2025 graduate of Brigham Young University, where he currently serves as editor-in-chief of The Daily Universe. He previously worked as a senior reporter, covering a range of campus and community issues. Dylan is passionate about exploring other cultures, learning new languages and traveling all over the world. He spent several years living in Europe, where he learned and studied both Russian and Lithuanian. Dylan aims to pursue a career in journalism that highlights global perspectives, different faiths and brings attention to underrepresented communities both locally and internationally.

Maria Crane

Prior to joining the Fort Worth Report, Crane worked as a freelance photojournalist in North Texas, including an internship with the Denton Record-Chronicle. Crane was the Spring 2024 photography fellow at The Texas Tribune where she covered politics and policy in Texas, and she was a part of the Eddie Adams Workshop XXXVII in Fall 2024. Crane has dual bachelor's degrees in photojournalism and political science as well as a master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. At UNT, she was photo editor of the North Texas Daily and Managing Editor for Hatch Visuals, a student run photo agency.

Simmerdeep Kaur

Before joining the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Simmerdeep Kaur was the lead reporter at the Redwood City Pulse, where she covered city government and launched the newsroom’s first-ever podcast. The series featured in-depth interviews with Redwood City Council candidates ahead of the 2024 elections. Kaur’s odyssey into journalism began as an undergraduate, working as a part of her university’s editorial team and interning at several newsrooms in India. As a Master’s student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, she was determined to reinvent herself and go beyond writing. She acquired data skills by learning Python and tools for visualizations to serve as a strong supplement to her stories. Kaur is a firm believer that in an era of growing threats to press freedom, robust journalism is more essential than ever. Over the past three years, she has reported on a wide range of topics, including police brutality, threats to press freedom, AI warfare, and the dangers of lithium-ion batteries.

Maria Eberhart

Maria Eberhart covers Maryland’s rural-urban digital divide for Technical.ly. Before joining Report for America, Eberhart worked as an editorial assistant at Pitchfork, handling administrative responsibilities alongside pitching album reviews. She also previously interned at the Baltimore Sun, where she covered breaking news and wrote feature stories about Charm City’s art scene. Eberhart graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 2023.

Alexander Banks

Before joining the Yakima Herald-Republic, Banks completed two internships with the Baker City Herald, through the University of Oregon's Snowden internship, and the Statesman Journal, in partnership with the Asian American Journalists Association. During those internships, he covered education, economic development, breaking news and feature stories. He holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Oregon State University and is currently studying for his master’s in strategic communications from Washington State University. His passion for journalism started while working for OSU’s student newspaper, The Daily Barometer, where he wrote his first feature story on the dean of the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences. Banks enjoys screenwriting, photography, videography and learning Spanish in his free time. A fun fact about him is that his mother used to be a columnist for The Oregonian.

Ellen Schmidt

Ellen Schmidt is a visual journalist born and based in Minnesota. She comes from a newspaper background after several internships and five years as a staff photojournalist in Las Vegas, Nevada. A graduate of the University of Minnesota Hubbard School of Journalism, she started her career working as a reporter, photographer and multimedia editor at the Minnesota Daily student newspaper. Her work seeks to visualize home, capture emotion and record moments that help people relate to one another.

Emma Malinak

Emma Malinak covers the stories of Lynchburg, Virginia, for Cardinal News. Before becoming a Report for America corps member, Malinak reported on everything from climate change to child care as an intern at VTDigger. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism and English from Washington and Lee University, where she was co-editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The Ring-tum Phi. Malinak was the founding CEO of the Ring-tum Phi, Inc., a nonprofit corporation designed to secure a sustainable financial model and editorial independence for the student-run paper.