North Carolina

Ryan Oehrli

Ryan Oehrli is a statewide accountability reporter at NC Local. Before joining Report for America, Oehrli reported on criminal justice at The Charlotte Observer, public safety at the Asheville Citizen Times, and other beats at several Mississippi outlets. Oehrli covered Border Patrol and ICE operations, the killing of Iryna Zarutska and North Carolina’s pardon system, among other issues. In 2025, with colleagues at the Observer and the News & Observer in Raleigh, he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for breaking news reporting on Hurricane Helene.

Estefanía Pinto Ruiz

Pinto Ruiz covers Latino and immigrant communities across North Carolina, focusing on democracy, immigration, and community affairs. Previously, Pinto Ruiz covered agriculture, environment, and water at KWQC TV6 News in the Quad Cities for Report for America and the Ag & Water Desk. Her reporting focused on elevating farmers’ voices and bringing awareness to the importance and difficulty of the work farmers do to feed the USA, often in an unpredictable industry. Some of her extensive reporting focused on mental health in agriculture, grain bin safety, and proposed pesticide legislation, earning her an honorable mention in the 2026 North American Agricultural Journalists writing awards. Pinto Ruiz is bilingual in English and Spanish and is a proud Colombian, which means you can often find her searching for the things she misses most as an immigrant—Colombian food and a good cup of Colombian coffee—alongside her companion on adventures, her dog Miel.

Enlace Latino NC

Enlace Latino NC is a nonpartisan digital news organization serving North Carolina's Spanish-speaking immigrant communities through high-quality, community-centered news. Our mission is to empower the diverse community of Latino immigrants in North Carolina to become more involved in the social, political and economic changes that affect them. We are the leading digital Spanish news organization dedicated to covering politics, government, health, immigration, and community affairs in North Carolina.

NC Local

NC Local is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization helping people in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties understand how statewide issues and government decisions affect their communities.

Border Belt Independent

The Border Belt Independent is a nonprofit, digital newsroom that focuses on issues and challenges that affect Bladen, Columbus, Robeson, and Scotland counties in southeastern North Carolina.

The Triangle Tribune

The Triangle Tribune, founded in 1998, serves Black communities in Raleigh and Durham, two of North Carolina's largest cities. Its news site and weekly paper focus on hyperlocal journalism.

The Assembly

The Assembly is a digital-first magazine publishing deep reporting on power and place in North Carolina. We launched in 2021 with a focus on interesting and nonpartisan journalism about our state. We tell big stories, and give our journalists space to be ambitious. Our reporting aims to be narrative, informative and revelatory. This year, we started building regional teams and partners to bring that same level of reporting to the city level.  

Patricia Serrano

Prior to joining Enlace Latino, Patricia Serrano was a freelance reporter, podcast producer, and host at Enlace Latino Podcast, where she covered immigrant communities in western North Carolina. Her work focuses on immigrant rights, cross-cultural stories, and grassroots responses to natural disasters. Originally from Argentina, she began her journalism career working in news agencies and later as a freelance narrative reporter and communications specialist. Patricia has experience as a co-producer for Radio Ambulante, including an episode about Guatemalan immigrant Juana Tobar, and has also co-produced bilingual audio documentaries such as Dreaming las Américas. She studied journalism at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata and continues to develop independent audio journalism projects. Based in Asheville, she is bilingual in Spanish and English. In her free time she enjoys reading and hiking along the Appalachian Mountain trails.

Gale Melcher

Before joining The Assembly, Melcher covered local government and community issues in Greensboro and Winston-Salem for Triad City Beat, a tenacious alternative newspaper that served the Triad community for 11 years before closing in February 2025. During her two years with the publication, she wrote hundreds of stories and reported on a wide range of topics including public housing, homelessness, policing, activism, elections and transit, producing in-depth, people-centered pieces. In January 2023, she wrote an investigative piece for Triad City Beat about Greensboro’s Pallet shelters, which remains the website’s most-viewed article. In 2024, Melcher earned a second place award from the North Carolina Press Association for her city/county government reporting, and has a bachelor's degree in biological sciences from North Carolina State University.