Investigate Midwest

The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting is an award-winning investigative news site based in Champaign, Illinois. It serves the public by providing in-depth journalism on agribusiness and related topics and issues. It also seeks to provide the education and training of journalists and students to improve the quality and breadth of news coverage of agribusiness.The Midwest Center predominantly covers issues throughout 12 states in the heartland of the U.S, with a frequent focus on Illinois and rural communities.

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.

Northern Public Radio – WNIJ

Northern Public Radio, a member station of NPR, has a mission to enrich, inspire and inform listeners in northern Illinois through programs and services that share ideas, encourage thought, entertain and create community.

Northern Public Radio – WNIJ

Northern Public Radio, a member station of NPR, has a mission to enrich, inspire and inform listeners in northern Illinois through programs and services that share ideas, encourage thought, entertain and create community.

Daily Herald

The Daily Herald is a 149-year-old, employee-owned news organization, and the largest in suburban Chicago. These suburbs account for half the population of the Chicago metro area and have the vast majority of the region’s governmental entities. There are 75 towns, 96 school districts and six counties and court systems in this area, offering rich opportunities for enterprising reporters.

Block Club Chicago

Block Club Chicago is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering the city's diverse neighborhoods. In three years, it has gone from a scrappy startup to one of the most respected news organizations in Chicago, publishing more than a dozen stories a day online.

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times serves readers in Chicago, the six-county metro region and northwest Indiana. For years, it has been providing a voice to the voiceless by publishing the work of a diverse group of journalists. The paper has won eight Pulitzer Prizes, two George Polk Awards for investigative journalism, and numerous other national and local awards for righting wrongs and changing public policy.

Amanda Pérez Pintado

Amanda Pérez Pintado covers Illinois' agriculture businesses and workers for The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news site based in Champaign, Illinois. She previously reported on trending topics and local events in South Florida as an intern at the Spanish-language news outlet El Nuevo Herald. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Puerto Rico's Río Piedras campus and a master's from New York University. While there, this multimedia reporter covered immigrant voters in the New Hampshire 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, the pandemic and Puerto Rico for Pavement Pieces, an NYU news site. Pérez Pintado was editor-in-chief of the student-run publication Latin America News Dispatch, which covers Latin America, the Caribbean and Latinos in the U.S., and in her native Puerto Rico she has reported for El Nuevo Día, the island's main paper.

Atavia Reed

Atavia Reed reports on Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods for Block Club Chicago, a nonprofit news site dedicated to covering the city’s neighborhoods. Previously, Reed was a reporter at the Chicago Tribune Media Group covering suburban news for the Pioneer Press, including stories on the pandemic’s effect on senior living and education. A multimedia journalist, Reed says she was once described as “too nosey for her own good” and decided to make a career out of it. She’s covered culture and news for USA Today, VICE, the Chicago Tribune, South Side Weekly and the Chicago Reader. Reed holds a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was the assistant editor for the school’s culture magazine, Buzz, contributed a narrative feature to the local paper and spent a semester studying dramatic writing at New York University.

Cheyanne Daniels

Cheyanne M. Daniels reports for the Chicago Sun-Times, covering the city's South and West Side neighborhoods. She hails from the south suburbs of Chicago, and earned her master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 2021, specializing in politics, policy and foreign affairs reporting. As a grad student, Daniels reported on politics and policies affecting disenfranchised and minority communities, such as Illinois inmates' and their response to the pandemic and vaccines. Daniels' work has been published in the Wisconsin State Journal, the Grio, South Side Weekly, and by UPI. Previously, she was a research scholar for the Journalism, Ethics and Democracy Institute at Notre Dame. Daniels holds a bachelor's in journalism from Illinois' North Central College, where she served as news editor of The Chronicle and NCClinked, its online news site.