Michigan

Sierra Clark

Sierra Clark reports for the Traverse City Record-Eagle in Michigan. Clark is Kichi-wiiwedoong Anishinaabe Odawa, and covers Indigenous stories in her ancestral lands in northern Michigan. She holds a bachelor's degree in freshwater science and sustainability from Western Michigan University, and has worked as a water quality analyst for conservation associations. In June 2020, she began a fellowship with the Mishigamiing Journalism Project, a partnership between the Record-Eagle and Indigenizing the News, a digital news organization devoted to Native American and Indigenous cultures, issues and histories. Through this fellowship, Clark developed relationships with several newsrooms, including NPR, and brought Indigenous representation to their stories. As co-editor of Indigenizing the News, she hopes to continue uplifting voices in her community by doing investigative reporting on contemporary and historical issues regarding the Anishinaabek in her state.

Benjamin Simon

Benjamin Simon is a general assignment reporter focusing on Barry County for The Hastings Banner in Hastings, Michigan. His emphasis includes schools, local government, business, environment and health. He has previously held internships at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, SLAM Magazine and the Riverfront Times. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in American Culture Studies and Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. As a section editor at the school newspaper, he won First Place in Feature Writing from the Missouri College Media Association for his story on a pop-up course exploring the broad ramifications of COVID. In his free time, he  likes to play basketball, listen to British rap and talk endlessly about his hometown of Philadelphia.

FlintBeat.com

Flint Beat is a hyperlocal news website covering Flint, Mich. with a focus on local government accountability, solutions journalism, and the restorative narrative. Flint Beat was launched in 2017 to help fill news gaps in the community with a mission to empower, impact and inform the residents of Flint.

Traverse City Record-Eagle

The Traverse City Record-Eagle is northern Michigan’s largest news outlet, operating print and digital publications, including a daily print edition, a quarterly magazine and two podcasts. The Record-Eagle has a strong history of strong watchdog reporting complemented by artful narrative writing. Our newsroom is situated in downtown Traverse City, but serves a five-county core coverage area as well as broad, growing sections of news desert in northern Michigan.  

Michigan Chronicle

The Michigan Chronicle is a news, information, and events company that has covered the interests of the African American community in Southeast Michigan with special focus on the city of Detroit since 1936. Leaders and readers in metropolitan Detroit look to the Michigan Chronicle to stay informed about issues that impact their lives. The Michigan Chronicle publishes daily content via michiganchronicle.com and a weekly print edition.

The Hastings Banner

The Hastings Banner, which has been in existence in south central Michigan since 1856, is a locally owned, quintessential family operation. The owner, with the help of his children, runs nine weeklies, specialty publications and commercial printing. His grandchildren help to maintain the property and produce Facebook videos. A small but seasoned news staff produce exclusive, comprehensive print and online coverage of Barry County, which has a population of about 62,000.

Nushrat Rahman

Nusrat Rahman covers economic mobility for the Detroit Free Press. A born and raised Detroiter, she interned for Hour Detroit Magazine. She has freelanced for Model D and Tostada Magazine and contributed to The New York Times. As a graduate student of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Rahman has written about a school in the Bronx for new immigrants and Bangladeshis working within New York City’s fast-food industry. A 2018 graduate of Wayne State University, Rahman is set to graduate this spring from Columbia, where she has focused on narrative and investigative reporting. She’s a graduate of the Al-Ikhlas Training Academy, a non-profit, full-time Islamic school in Detroit.

Clara Hendrickson

Clara Hendrickson does PolitiFact fact checking at the Detroit Free Press, where she holds public officials across the state to account on a range of issues. Prior to her time in Michigan, Hendrickson was a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. and a freelance reporter for national and local outlets. At Brookings, she wrote on a range of public policy issues, including rising regional inequality, domestic and international efforts to regulate “Big Tech” and the financial challenges confronting local newsrooms. Her journalism has appeared in Boston Review, Democracy Journal, The Atlantic and Politico Magazine. She has also contributed feature articles for the non-profit outlet DCist, such as the impact on service workers of eliminating late-night public transportation routes and efforts to provide residents affordable exercise options in neighborhoods that don’t have a gym. Hendrickson holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Pennsylvania where she was an op-ed columnist for The Daily Pennsylvanian, frequently covering labor and income disparity issues on campus and in Philadelphia.

Katie Kanazawich

KT Kanazawich is a photojournalist for Flint Beat based in Flint, Mich. A documentary and portrait photographer from Binghamton, N.Y., she has been working as a freelancer collecting community stories and photographing landscapes. She is an active community member volunteering time at East Learning Center Alternative School, The Dept. of Public Art, Avenue DIY, and The Broome County Humane Society. Kanazawich has also led photography lectures at Broome Community College and Cornell Cooperative Extension. She has worked as a darkroom assistant for photographer and artist ‘Teknari’. Before graduating with a degree in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2014, she interned with music photographer Shane McCauley, as well as at the Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Fine Art Gallery in NYC. Kanazawich is drawn to making colorful, intimate images of under-represented communities and people.

Anna Nichols

Anna Nichols covers the Michigan statehouse for The Associated Press, concentrating on roads, bridges and other ailing infrastructure in this Rust Belt state. The state capital is familiar terrain for Nichols, a graduate of Michigan State (in East Lansing) where, as a student journalist for the campus paper, The State News, she won national attention for her work on the sexual assault corruption scandal that engulfed USA Gymnastics and led to the conviction of team physician Larry Nassar. She has also covered welfare and criminal justice for the Michigan Advance, where she developed the paper’s human welfare beat. A veteran of local news coverage, Nichols was also a reporting Intern for MLive, and the Saginaw News & Bay City Times. Her awards include the Society of Professional Journalists Detroit Chapter 2018 Lawrence A. Laurain Scholarship, being named Michigan Press Association 2018 Foundation Scholar and winning the National College Media 2018 “Best of Show” print issue centerpiece.