Hawaii

Linsey Dower

Linsey Dower covers the cultural affairs beat for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaii’s largest daily newspaper, based in the state capital on the island of Oahu. Dower hails from Oahu, and is a recent graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a bachelor's degree in journalism. She has interned at the Star-Advertiser, covering state legislature, and at Hawaii Business magazine, where she reported on a variety of topics, including community-supported agriculture, local art events and the mortuary business.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser is the largest daily newspaper in Hawaii, formed in 2010 with the merger of The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin after the acquisition of the former by Black Press, which already owned the latter.

Jayna Omaye

Jayna Omaye covers ethnic and cultural affairs for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Hawaii's largest daily newspaper. Born and raised on Oahu, Omaye recently worked as a staff writer at Honolulu Magazine, where she led one of its largest projects in recent years—a 19-page cover story and 20 individual pages online—about the life stories of Hawaii's Japanese-American veterans. The multimedia feature won two national first-place awards. Her work has also garnered three local awards. Omaye began her journalism career as a reporter for the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, and then moved back home to work at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in 2015. She earned her master's degree from Northwestern University, and her bachelor's from the University of Oregon. Omaye has danced hula for most of her life and recently began playing taiko, a percussion instrument, after a story on Honolulu's ethnic festivals inspired her to reconnect with her Japanese heritage.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser is the largest daily newspaper in Hawaii, formed in 2010 with the merger of The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin after the acquisition of the former by Black Press, which already owned the latter.

Kevin Knodell

Kevin Knodell reports for Honolulu Civil Beat focusing on Hawaii’s large military and veterans’ presence. He was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq as a correspondent for Coffee or Die magazine as the COVID-19 pandemic began. His writing and photography have appeared in The Daily Beast, Playboy and Foreign Policy. He has reported from the field on Northeast Syria’s “Rojava Revolution,” covered U.S.-China military relations, examined America’s vast civil-military divide, interviewed refugees using art to fight terrorist ideology and profiled Iraqi Kurdistan’s nightlife. He’s the producer of the podcast “War College,” the co-creator of the graphic memoir Machete Squad and he wrote the Acts of Valor comic series in Naval History magazine. He’s a former contributing editor at the website War Is Boring, where he supervised field coverage of Iraq and Syria during the Yazidi genocide.

Honolulu Civil Beat

Honolulu Civil Beat is a digital news site focused on in-depth enterprise and investigative reporting that can have meaningful impact and drive positive change in Hawaii. Civil Beat was started with the aim of filling a void for serious civic affairs reporting in a shrinking media landscape. Civil Beat’s 18-person newsroom strives to cover important stories in Hawaii that no one else is telling. Major areas of coverage include police accountability and corruption, the environment and climate change, the city’s struggling rail project, public schools, state government, social issues and Native Hawaiian affairs.

Lorin Eleni Avendaño

Eleni is a multimedia reporter who was born and raised in Honolulu. As a business reporter at Pacific Business News, she covered health care, nonprofits and tourism, writing about the Affordable Care Act, alternative lodging and the controversy over the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii. She has won numerous awards for excellence in journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists Hawaii Chapter. Eleni studied international relations and communications at American University and will complete her master's degree in journalism from UC Berkeley in May 2019.

Honolulu Civil Beat

Honolulu Civil Beat is a digital news site focused on in-depth enterprise and investigative reporting that can have meaningful impact and drive positive change in Hawaii. Civil Beat was started with the aim of filling a void for serious civic affairs reporting in a shrinking media landscape. Civil Beat’s 18-person newsroom strives to cover important stories in Hawaii that no one else is telling. Major areas of coverage include police accountability and corruption, the environment and climate change, the city’s struggling rail project, public schools, state government, social issues and Native Hawaiian affairs.