Florida

WUSF

WUSF is the NPR station for the Tampa Bay region; we are committed to providing accurate, honest journalism that helps the public understand the community and the world. Our journalists are independent, curious, and respectful. As a newsroom, we are committed to listening and engaging with the community to provide journalism that reflects the place we call home. This addition to the newsroom will be supported by the entire team as well as two senior editors who can guide and coach this new talent.

Tampa Bay Times

The Tampa Bay Times, winner of 14 Pulitzer Prizes, is Florida’s largest newspaper and a trusted source for news. As a locally owned and independent media organization, the Times also operates tampabay.com. In addition to its flagship publication, the company publishes the free weekly tbt* Weekend and Bay magazine, offering comprehensive coverage of local news, entertainment and lifestyles. The Times now employs 80 full-time journalists — each dedicated to delivering impactful, in-depth reporting.

Mainstreet Daily News

Mainstreet Daily News is laser-focused on local. We keep citizens informed about local news, sports and events, so they can stay safe, cast informed votes, and be a better neighbor in Gainesville and the surrounding area. We work to unify the community by reporting the facts accurately and fairly, so people can draw their own conclusions.

Oviedo Community News

Oviedo Community News is a nonprofit, independent newsroom serving Greater Oviedo and Winter Springs, Florida. The Greater Oviedo and Winter Springs community was a news desert before Oviedo Community News launched in 2021. Its mission is to create a better informed and connected community through independent, public service journalism that focuses on issues that residents told us matter to them.

Billy Jean Louis

Award-winning journalist Billy Jean Louis is a senior editor and reporter for Miami Fourth Estate in Florida. He covered litigation for Bloomberg Law; diversity, equity, and inclusion for The Baltimore Sun; and health and education for The Baxter Bulletin before joining Report for America. His reporting on education has earned him prizes from the Virginia Press Association and Associated Press Media Editors. Jean Louis, a journalism graduate of the University of Florida, was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. He speaks French and Haitian Creole. He was first drawn to journalism during his youth in Haiti when he was exposed to the coup d’état of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, the Haitian press didn’t act as a strong watchdog, inspiring Jean Louis to become a journalist to expose corruption in Haiti — and around the world.

Kate Payne

Kate Payne covers government and politics for The Associated Press with a focus on the Florida Legislature and education. Before joining Report for America, Payne covered education for WLRN Public Media in South Florida, where she profiled students and pressed officials in some of the country’s largest school districts. Payne has spent her career in public media newsrooms in Florida and Iowa, where her reporting has spanned interviewing middle schoolers on the lunch line to presidential candidates on the campaign trail. In 2020, she and NPR’s Miles Parks broke the story that Iowa Democrats planned to use an untested and potentially vulnerable app to transmit their Caucus results. Payne has won awards for her political reporting, feature writing and sound editing, and has reported from the field in the aftermath of multiple natural disasters. Like a good Floridian, Payne has a love for the weird and the wild and makes an excellent Key lime pie.

Rose Schnabel

Rose Schnabel covers agriculture, water, and climate in North Central Florida at WUFT News. Before joining Report for America, Schnabel worked as a bilingual AAAS Mass Media Fellow at El Nuevo Día in San Juan, Puerto Rico, covering science and the environment. She holds undergraduate degrees in biology and Spanish from Indiana University, where she completed an honors thesis on the rhetoric of science in the 1950s birth control trials in Puerto Rico. During her time at Indiana, Schnabel worked as a science writer for their College and led the online creative content team of their undergraduate academic journal.

Miami Fourth Estate

Miami Fourth Estate is a nonprofit, nonpartisan hyperlocal news organization focused on bringing strong news coverage to Miami’s neighborhoods and 34 municipalities. Our mission is to make sure that residents of every town get the information they need about local government, the environment, business, education and other pressing community issues and solutions. We also believe in developing the next generation of journalists and are partners with local educational institutions.

The Associated Press – Florida

The Associated Press is an independent global news organization dedicated to factual reporting. Founded in 1846, AP today remains the most trusted source of fast, accurate and unbiased news in all formats and the essential provider of the technology and services vital to the news business. More than half the world’s population sees AP journalism every day.

WUFT News

WUFT News is a multiplatform, bilingual public media newsroom housed in the Innovation News Center at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville. In operation since 1958, our coverage today includes digital, TV and radio reporting across 16 counties in North Central Florida. Our mission is to inform and connect our diverse audiences and communities by producing excellent, multi-format news coverage across our region while nurturing the next generation of journalists.