2026-2027

Alex Cox

Alex Cox is a graduate from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. They worked at a variety of newsrooms in the Missouri News Network, with their primary newsroom being KBIA, the NPR affiliate for Mid-Missouri. In their many jobs, they've wore many hats, but their favorite type of reporting is working with audio and data. They believe in trying to take themselves out of the story as much as possible to let their sources tell the story.

Jonathan Aguilar

Before joining Milwaukee Neighborhood News, Jonathan Aguilar was a photojournalist for The Blade in Toledo, OH. As a bilingual multimedia journalist, he was first inspired by a trip to Mexico in 2017 and he has been telling stories with his camera ever since. He attended DePaul University for his bachelor’s degree in journalism and attended the Medill School of Journalism for a master’s degree in journalism. Aguilar’s passion for visibility through journalism led him to help establish the National Association of Hispanic Journalists at DePaul University and he helped establish the first Spanish-speaking newsroom at DePaul University.

Reuben M. Schafir

Reuben M. Schafir covers Indigenous communities in Maine for the Portland Press Herald. He previously covered the county government and the environmental beats for the Durango Herald. There, he reported on environmental threats to water in Southwest Colorado, covered the state’s two federally recognized tribes and ensured accountability and transparency on the part of governments and elected officials. He won numerous awards from the Colorado Press Association and the Top of the Rockies Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for his reporting on the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe’s experimenting with water-efficient crops, who is harmed when insurance companies and health systems don’t get along, innovative wildfire management practices, election coverage and more. When he’s not working sources, Reuben is an explorer of all things outdoors and likes pickin’ tunes on string instruments.

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.

Justin Hamel

Before joining the Waco Bridge, Justin Hamel spent the previous six years living in El Paso, Texas, as a freelance photojournalist covering migration along the U.S.-Mexico border and the energy industry in the West Texas Permian Basin. As an avid outdoors enthusiast, his photos show the increasing militarization of the populated borderlands as well as the remote and wild regions with minimal human impact. His photos always seek to humanize the effects of industry and government policy. Hamel’s introduction to the journalism industry began in the sixth grade in Galion, Ohio, and later in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, where he started delivering papers from his bike. He later went on to earn a degree in Documentary Photography from the New England School of Photography in Boston, Massachusetts.

Sarah Dolgin

Before joining the Fauquier Times, Sarah Dolgin covered local and statewide politics for the Chattanooga Times Free Press and launched a weekly politics newsletter. She started at the Times Free Press as a digital producer and journalist on the newspaper's web team. As a college newsroom intern for Central Current, Dolgin reported on the stories of Ukrainian refugees who left their homes at the start of the war and stayed with families in Central New York. She holds a dual bachelor's degree in newspaper and online journalism and information management and technology from Syracuse University.

Mariana Martínez Barba

Prior to joining Voice of San Diego, Martínez Barba worked as a freelance journalist between the U.S. and Mexico, producing stories on immigration, culture, and climate for outlets like The Los Angeles Times, Prism Reports, and Ireland’s national radio station RTÉ. She also worked as a stringer for The Washington Post and as a field reporter and translator for The New York Times. As an intern with The Associated Press, Martínez Barba covered the historic inauguration of Mexico’s first female president, the capital’s ongoing water crisis, and investigated the growing network of migrant camps in Mexico City. She holds a master's degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY with a double concentration in international and bilingual reporting. She was a finalist for the Ñ Awards for NAHJ in 2024 and a recipient of the Silurians Press Club Award in 2023 for local reporting in New York City. She also holds a B.A. in Sociology from Occidental College.

Alexandra Markovich

Ally Markovich is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Previously, she was an education and enterprise reporter at Berkeleyside, where her data-driven, accountability and narrative journalism earned multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California. At Berkeleyside, her investigation into a sexual misconduct case exposed how a school district knowingly kept a predatory teacher employed for over 15 years. Markovich’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and The Washington Post, and she has reported internationally from Ukraine. Before journalism, she taught high school English in high-poverty schools in Mississippi, New Jersey and California. She holds a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University and an M.A. in Journalism and Politics from Columbia University.

Justin Taylor

As a visual journalist for The Current, Justin Taylor covers the stories of the challenges and cultural changes residents face with sea-level rise and fast growth in Coastal Georgia's six counties. He is a self-taught photographer who started his own photography business in 2017 and began freelancing in photojournalism in 2023. Before journalism, Taylor spent 15 years in the marine industry as a captain on a tugboat in the Savannah River. His journey with photography began during his time in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served two combat tours in Iraq, including the 2003 invasion. Taylor brought a 35mm camera with him and started photographing daily life in a war zone, sparking a lifelong interest in documentary photography.