Connecticut

Brenda León

Brenda Millicent León reports on undercovered Latino communities for Connecticut Public Radio. She covered the recovery efforts following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico during her internship at The Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico. A graduate from Lehman College at the City University of New York, she focused on broadcast journalism with a concentration in political science. During her time there she was a host at WWRL La Invasora 1600 AM. Her work has been published in The Gothamist, Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), El Deadline and The Mott Haven Herald. A Bronx native, León is a recent graduate from The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she obtained her master’s in Spanish-language journalism.  

Ali Oshinskie

Ali Oshinskie reports for Connecticut Public, the Constitution State’s only statewide public media resource and home to Connecticut Public Television and Connecticut Public Radio. Her focus is on the Naugatuck River Valley and the issues that affect blue-collar workers there. The Report for America assignment is terra firma for Oshinskie, who grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. She has produced live radio shows at every hour of the morning between 2 a.m.and 10 a.m. during internships and fellowships for New Hampshire Public Radio, Marketplace Morning Report and Connecticut Public Radio. She has written for The Hartford Courant and Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s The Arts Paper, and she has produced for Wondery’s Business Wars Daily and the New England News Collaborative’s weekly program “NEXT.” Later this year, her writing will be published in “Fast Funny Women,” an anthology of essays. After completing her undergrad at the University of Connecticut, Oshinskie founded a podcasting company, PODSTORIES. Most recently she was a program coordinator for the Yale School of Nursing.

Connecticut Public

Our organization was established in 1962 as the Connecticut Educational Television Station, broadcast on station WEDH from the basement of Trinity College Library in Hartford. CPTV was created in 1974 when WEDH formed a network with three other television stations in the state. CT Public Radio signed on in June 1978, and that year joined CPTV to form Connecticut Public Broadcasting, Inc. For many years, the station aired primarily classical music in between Morning Edition and All Things Considered. It changed to an all-news and information format in 2006. Now, we produce 10-12 daily radio newscasts, four call-in talk shows, and one weekly news magazine show and podcast. In addition to statewide distribution through CT Public platforms, our reporting is shared regionally through the New England News Collaborative (a network of eight public media newsrooms covering the six New England states) and nationally through NPR.

The Connecticut Mirror

The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet with a very clear mission: Produce deep reporting on government policies and politics, to become an invaluable resource for anyone who lives, works or cares about Connecticut, and to hold our policymakers accountable for their decisions and actions. The Mirror’s staff consists of award-winning editors and reporters with decades of experience in Connecticut newsrooms or working for other national or state news operations.

The Associated Press

The Associated Press is a global news agency that began 172 years ago as a cooperative of five New York City newspapers. With 263 locations in more than 100 countries, AP provides journalism to roughly 15,000 media outlets around the world. AP sets standards for ethics and excellence, and has won 52 Pulitzer Prizes, including the 2016 gold medal for Public Service for an investigation into labor abuses in the seafood industry, reports that freed more than 2,000 slaves. AP’s seven news bureaus in the northeast U.S. provide vital local and regional news to 378 newsrooms.

Connecticut Public

Our organization was established in 1962 as the Connecticut Educational Television Station, broadcast on station WEDH from the basement of Trinity College Library in Hartford. CPTV was created in 1974 when WEDH formed a network with three other television stations in the state. CT Public Radio signed on in June 1978, and that year joined CPTV to form Connecticut Public Broadcasting, Inc. For many years, the station aired primarily classical music in between Morning Edition and All Things Considered. It changed to an all-news and information format in 2006. Now, we produce 10-12 daily radio newscasts, four call-in talk shows, and one weekly news magazine show and podcast. In addition to statewide distribution through CT Public platforms, our reporting is shared regionally through the New England News Collaborative (a network of eight public media newsrooms covering the six New England states) and nationally through NPR.

Kelan Lyons

Kelan was a staff writer for Salt Lake City Weekly, where he wrote about immigration, economic development and state and local politics. Before that, in Texas, he covered the Brazos County courthouse for the Bryan-College Station Eagle, where he won a 2018 Texas Associated Press Managing Editors first-place feature writing award for his story on how a 35-year-old cold case still affects the community. He was a fellow at City Bureau in Chicago, where he produced an audio documentary about police misconduct settlements. He majored in psychology at University of Pittsburgh and graduated with an M.S. from Northwestern University, where he was an Alfred Balk scholarship recipient.

Chris Ehrmann

Chris is an Emmy-nominated journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker. He has worked for the Associated Press in Michigan covering state politics, the 2016 presidential election and the Flint water crisis. Previously, he was a reporter for the Newport News-Times on the Oregon coast where he directed, filmed and edited two documentaries: one on the homeless crisis in Newport and another on inmates living with mental illnesses, which earned him an Emmy nomination. He attended Wayne State University in Detroit where he was a part of the Journalism Institute for Media Diversity Honors Program and a recipient of the Robert McGruder Scholarship and the Benjamin J. Burns Endowed Scholarship. Statehouse coverage focused on criminal justice and mental health Chris reports from Hartford, Connecticut’s state capitol, alongside veteran statehouse staff, with a mission of looking at criminal justice issues across the state, including poverty, race and changing policy of who is prosecuted, how they are incarcerated and how politics in America today influences those issues. He has access to AP colleagues on the national state government reporting team, data experts and a network of colleagues with deep experience reporting on government. AP’s team of reporters in Washington, D.C. also help him understand the connections between state and local trends. He produces a balance of spot news and enterprise work, with an emphasis on data-driven stories that can be distributed to AP customers around the state.

The Connecticut Mirror

The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet with a very clear mission: Produce deep reporting on government policies and politics, to become an invaluable resource for anyone who lives, works or cares about Connecticut, and to hold our policymakers accountable for their decisions and actions. The Mirror’s staff consists of award-winning editors and reporters with decades of experience in Connecticut newsrooms or working for other national or state news operations.