Illinois

Jake Wittich

Jake Wittich covers Lakeview/Boystown/Lincoln Park areas of Chicago, for Block Club Chicago. He has covered local news with an LGBTQ focus as a weekend reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times and as a freelancer for Block Club Chicago, and various LGBTQ publications including the Windy City Times. His investigative reporting on racism in the Boystown neighborhood was recognized as a finalist in the 2019 Chicago Journalists Association awards. Wittich previously worked as an overnight breaking news reporter for the Sun-Times after completing a summer internship for the newspaper's city desk. He attended Columbia College Chicago, where he was managing editor of its student-run newspaper, The Columbia Chronicle.

Anthony Vazquez

Anthony Vazquez is a Marine Corps veteran and photojournalist for the Chicago Sun-Times where he concentrates on city’s south and west sides. Previously Vazquez was based out of Iowa and Mexico where he focused on the effects of Medicaid privatization in Iowa and rural life in the United States and Mexico. In the Marine Corps, Vazquez supervised flight line operations of multiple airfield control groups as well as aided in medical evacuations of injured personnel by securing and designating landing zones for helicopters. His experience in the Marine Corps confirmed the importance of documenting and sharing stories. After the military, Anthony pursued journalism at the University of Iowa where he served as photo editor of The Daily Iowan. Post-graduation, he moved to Mexico to continue documenting illegal immigration. While in Mexico he was a stringer for The Associated Press and AP Images.

Juanpablo Ramirez

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco covers substandard housing and police-community relations for WNIJ Radio in Illinois. An audio producer and journalist based out of Chicago, Ramirez-Franco has been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, he produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois, He is a graduate of Knox College.

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is the legendary news voice of Chicago’s working class. The news organization was recently acquired by a diverse consortium of philanthropists, business leaders and Chicago area labor organizations.

Chicago Sun-Times

The Chicago Sun-Times is the legendary news voice of Chicago’s working class. The news organization was recently acquired by a diverse consortium of philanthropists, business leaders and Chicago area labor organizations.

Belleville News-Democrat

The Belleville News-Democrat is a 161-year-old news organization that covers Southwestern Illinois, including the communities east of St. Louis and across the Mississippi River, in an area known as the metro-east. Our coverage area is an eclectic mix of mid-sized and smaller towns, bedroom communities and farm country. Many residents commute to St. Louis for work everyday. We are also home to Scott Air Force Base, with its 13,000 military and civilian workers.

Northern Public Radio – WNIJ

The mission of Northern Public Radio is to enrich, inspire and inform adults in northern Illinois through programs and services that share ideas, encourage thought, give pleasure and create community. We are a member station for National Public Radio (NPR) and create opportunities throughout the year to work with reporters at all stages of their careers. The challenge and opportunity of our reach is the large geographic area we serve; from the rolling hills of northwestern Illinois as far as the Mississippi River, north to the southern Wisconsin border, south to the beauty of the Illinois Valley and Starved Rock state park near LaSalle, with an urban center of Rockford and the educational hub of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. The urban/rural divide allows us to provide perspectives of scope, scale, and context to how issues affect our listeners in these different landscapes that is not replicated by TV and newspapers given their smaller geographic reach.

Block Club Chicago

Block Club Chicago is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization dedicated to covering Chicago’s neighborhoods. The news organization’s mission is to cover the city through a truly block-level lens that encourages people to get involved at a local level—whether that’s through campaigning for a local school council seat or trying a family-owned restaurant instead of a chain. Block Clubs seeks to build community through ground-level reporting of the city’s neighborhoods.

Belleville News-Democrat

The Belleville News-Democrat is a 161-year-old news organization that covers Southwestern Illinois, including the communities east of St. Louis and across the Mississippi River, in an area known as the metro-east. Our coverage area is an eclectic mix of mid-sized and smaller towns, bedroom communities and farm country. Many residents commute to St. Louis for work everyday. We are also home to Scott Air Force Base, with its 13,000 military and civilian workers.

Manny Ramos

Ramos is a two-time Fellow at City Bureau, a civic journalism lab based on the South Side, for which he covered the Chicago Police Department’s community-policing initiatives and worked as a public health multimedia reporter in collaboration with WBEZ’s Curious City. He also served as a journalism mentor for underserved youth via Free Spirit Media. Prior to this, Ramos reported on city politics and Chicago Public Schools for Gaper’s Block and covered municipal elections for the Daily Line. He was an editorial intern for the Chicago Reader and The Depaulia’s first podcast producer and political reporter. Reporting on Chicago's South and West Sides Ramos has joined the Chicago Sun-Times, where he will focus on Chicago’s south and west sides, including the neighborhood where he was raised.