Kentucky

Northern Kentucky Tribune, Kentucky Forward, Kentucky Center

The North Kentucky Tribune serves the three-county region—Boone, Kenton and Campbell—that makes up Northern Kentucky, the third leg of the Golden Triangle in Kentucky (Lexington and Louisville being the other two), the economic engine of the state. We were founded in 2014 by the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism to fill the void in local journalism left by the demise of The Kentucky Post. We are a small but committed team of displaced journalists devoted to honest news, sound ethics, solid professionalism—and our community.

Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting

The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom based in Louisville with coverage focused statewide. Our mission is to protect society’s most vulnerable citizens, expose wrongdoing in the public and private sectors, increase transparency in government and hold leaders accountable. KyCIR is the creation of the nonprofit Louisville Public Media, which announced KyCIR’s formation in spring 2013. We are a part of the WFPL newsroom, an NPR affiliate.

Will Wright

Will Wright covered the environment and government accountability during internships at the Sacramento Bee, the Lexington Herald-Leader and the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. He was editor-in-chief of University of Kentucky’s independent student newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel. After graduating from University of Kentucky in December 2016, Wright completed a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. He grew up in Eighty Four, PA, a small town outside Pittsburgh. Since joining RFA as a Galloway Fellow, Will has been awarded the McClatchy President’s Award for Journalism Excellence and a First Place Kentucky Press Association Award for his ongoing coverage of water in Eastern Kentucky and holding public agencies accountable. Watchdog reporting in Eastern Kentucky Wright has reopened the Lexington Herald Leader’s Pike County Bureau in Kentucky. He already put a spotlight on Kentucky’s “worst water district” where some residents went without water for weeks. The district’s business manager retired shortly after publication, and the state committed $3.4 million to fix water issues in eastern Kentucky. Will also collaborated with veteran reporter Bill Estep to break a story about $3 million in back taxes owed by Kentucky-based coal companies linked to West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice. Will continues this work in his second year as a Report for America corps member.

Julia Fair

Julia has been a government watchdog reporter at The News Leader in Staunton, Virginia. Before that, she had internships with USA TODAY, the Kenosha News in Wisconsin, and the Rappahannock News in Virginia. She has won several awards including Virginia Press Honors for in-depth and investigative reporting. She’s a graduate of the Ohio University E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. Government watchdog reporting in Northern Kentucky Julia lives and works out of Northern Kentucky, watchdogging and explaining the efforts of the three major county governments, the major cities, and the state legislative efforts that are unique to Northern Kentucky. Among the topics of high concern to the Enquirer’s Northern Kentucky audience: growth, poverty, taxes and the upcoming 2019 gubernatorial election. In particular, she covers what local elected leaders are spending money on, what development projects they’re approving, the Frankfort delegation and how local schools are performing.

Cincinnati.com / The Enquirer

Founded in 1841, The Cincinnati Enquirer publishes primarily via the Cincinnati.com website, the Cincinnati.com app and a daily newspaper. Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, The Enquirer is part of the Gannett-owned USA Today network. The local news site covers seven counties in the Greater Cincinnati region, maintains a two-person Columbus, Ohio statehouse bureau, and serves as the primary source for investigative and watchdog journalism in the region. The Enquirer/Cincinnati.com is the No. 1 news source for the Greater Cincinnati metro area, according to comScore.

John Boyle

John Boyle reports for WFPL News Louisville where he covers the local civics beat—from Census outcomes to the democratic process and elections to how local government works. The reporting provides the historical context of voting law, districting and civil rights. Boyle has spent the past year as a reporter for the News and Tribune, an Indiana publication, covering Clark and Floyd counties in the southern part of the state. In that time, he focused on the operations of local governing bodies, ranging from those of the smallest towns to the largest cities. His first tenure at the newspaper lasted from 2016 to 2017, serving as the education reporter during school board shakeups and major referenda. In between stints, Boyle took a deep dive into the world of health care as an investigative reporter at Berkeley Research Group in New York City. His interest in reporting started at Indiana University Southeast, where he wrote for a number of magazines and the student newspaper, the Horizon.

Graham Ambrose

Graham Ambrose is a reporter for the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. Based in Louisville, Ambrose focuses on the underreported problems with youth services throughout the Bluegrass State. Ambrose covered the Iowa presidential caucuses for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa. Previously he covered the fallout from the worst-ever flood of the Mississippi River and the hollowing out of the rural and industrial Midwest for the Dispatch-Argus, a newspaper in East Moline, Ill. He was an intern at The Boston Globe and The Denver Post. Graham has worked as a speechwriter, a public records redactor and a physics tutor, but his favorite job was youth baseball umpire. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University, where he graduated summa cum laude.

Alex Acquisto

Alex has been a reporter at the Bangor Daily News in Maine, first covering the state’s lobster and tourism industries on the midcoast, then leading the paper’s metro coverage in Bangor, before finally reporting on Maine politics in the state capital. She has uncovered problems with the Legislature’s mandatory sexual harassment training that led to the ousting of its trainer, and her reporting on the deaths of children in Maine, prompted a legislative investigation into the state’s over-burdened child services agency. Her work has earned her several first place awards in education, news analysis, and law enforcement reporting from the Maine Press Association. Born and raised in Kentucky, Alex first spent time in Maine as a canoe instructor and returned to study writing. She has also reported for the Kennebunk Post and the Forecaster, and she was a teaching artists at The Telling Room, a non-profit organization that teaches storytelling skills to Maine youth. Alex is a graduate of Western Kentucky University and the Salt Institute of Documentary Studies. Watchdog reporting on public health in Kentucky Alex focuses on the region’s health problems, exposes flaws in Kentucky’s social services programs, gives voice to people struggling to care for themselves and their loved ones and offers potential solutions to problems that have plagued the area for a century. In particular, Alex serves as a watchdog of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, a government agency that wields enormous power over Kentucky’s most vulnerable citizens with  little scrutiny and transparency. She is based in Lexington, but spends extensive time in the Capitol bureau, especially during legislative sessions, and reports from communities in Eastern Kentucky.  She is directed by the newspaper’s deputy editor for accountability and engagement, who has overseen numerous award-winning projects and guides the paper’s coverage of state government and Appalachian Kentucky.