Illinois

Raymon Troncoso

Raymon Troncoso covers the Illinois statehouse for Capitol News Illinois, with a focus on legislation and issues affecting ethnic communities, minority populations, distressed communities and rural areas. Previously, while attending the University of Florida, he covered local politics and elections, among other things, as a student journalist with WUFT. He was also a Morning Edition host and producer at WUFT TV’s First at Five PBS news show and reported on special projects, earning him Florida AP and regional RTDNA awards. Troncoso was raised in Miramar, FL, where he has been a volunteer wrestling coach at American Senior High School in Hialeah.

Capitol News Illinois

Capitol News Illinois is a news service operated by the Illinois Press Foundation that directly addresses the shrinking press corps at the Statehouse. The mission of Capitol News Illinois is to provide credible and unbiased coverage of Illinois state government, including daily coverage of the Legislature including committee hearings; state agencies and issues; state office holders; and the Illinois Supreme Court and legal matters. Our content is distributed free to nearly 450 daily and non-daily newspapers statewide. Since the news service was launched Jan. 28, 2019, content produced by CNI has been published in 363 Illinois newspapers with a total circulation of more than 1.9 million.

Rita Oceguera

Rita Oceguera covers communities that ring Chicago, including Aurora, Cicero, Elgin, Joliet and Waukegan, for Injustice Watch. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Northwestern University, where she studied social justice and investigative reporting and focused on a range of Latino issues. During her internship at The Bubble in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oceguera dove deep into the inequalities that women face as soccer players and sharpened her skills as a video editor. She then worked with The Chicago Reporter to examine the spread of business vacancies in Chicago and analyzed a prosperous Latino neighborhood. Her partnership with The Chicago Reporter led her into an investigation of the complexities that low income students face when applying to colleges. Originally from Aurora, Oceguera now lives in Chicago with her fiancé, her pet axolotl (a.k.a. a Mexican walking fish) and an abundance of plants.

Injustice Watch

Founded in 2015, Injustice Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan journalism organization that conducts in-depth research exposing institutional failures that obstruct justice and equality. Our work largely focuses on the justice system, individuals who are poorly served by the system, and the policies that perpetuate inequities within the system. Much of our work focuses on how justice is meted out in Cook County; however, we occasionally take on stories outside our primary coverage area that are consistent with our mission. Along with our primary commitment to investigative journalism, Injustice Watch mentors and trains the next generation of reporters through robust internship and fellowship programs. We also partner with communities to create opportunities for discourse and dialogue around our journalism, and experiment with creative, human-centered forms of storytelling.

Megan Valley

Megan Valley covers education for the Belleville News-Democrat in Belleville, Ill. She covered K-12 and higher education for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa for a year and a half. A 2018 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, she double-majored in English and the Program of Liberal Studies, and worked for The Observer, the student paper, first as a news writer and eventually as assistant managing editor. She was an intern at Ave Maria Press, a Catholic publisher, in Notre Dame and wrote on music for Exclaim!, a monthly Canadian music magazine. The summer after graduating, Valley attended New York University’s Summer Publishing Institute. She grew up in Flushing, Michigan, a suburb of Flint.

DeAsia Sutgrey

DeAsia Sutgrey covers East St. Louis for the Belleville News-Democrat in Belleville, Ill. She has been an intern and fellow for The Nation, VICE and the Detroit Free Press and blogged on culture for Blavity, a media company created by and for black millennials. At The Nation, she was part of the magazine’s “Vision 2020 Project” reporting on how young people are approaching the 2020 presidential election. She’s due to graduate in 2020 from the University of Kansas’ William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications, with a B.S. in Journalism with a minor in African and African-American Studies. Additionally, Sutgrey was a reporter for The University Daily Kansan, the University of Kansas’ student newspaper, for four years.

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.