North Carolina

Carolina Public Press

Carolina Public Press is a 501(c)(3) independent nonprofit news organization dedicated to nonpartisan, in-depth and investigative news. Founded in 2011, it was primarily focused on the state’s Appalachian Mountains until February 2018, when it expanded to cover the entire state. The organization operates with a leadership team of six, including two full-time editors, a news and community partnership manager, two full-time reporters and 10 freelancers, located across the state. Its content is widely distributed to media outlets across North Carolina.

WFAE

WFAE is the NPR station serving a 32-county listening area in the Charlotte region. Our mission is to produce journalism that informs, enriches and inspires. For 32 years, people across the Carolinas have relied on WFAE to offer comprehensive and in-depth reporting on the topics they need to understand, whether of local, national, or international importance. Acclaimed NPR programs and our local show, Charlotte Talks, continue to be cornerstones of our trusted on-air brand. Our increasingly diverse community consumes content through our broadcast signals, online at WFAE.org, through smart speakers, newsletters, podcasts and social media. Stories produced by our staff often air on NPR stations across the country as well as on BBC news.  

WFDD / La Noticia

Founded in 1946 by two students in their dorm room on the original Wake Forest College campus in Wake Forest, NC, 88.5 WFDD, is North Carolina’s longest running public radio station and the state’s charter NPR affiliate station. It broadcasts in 32 counties across the Piedmont and High Country of North Carolina and southern Virginia. The news team consists of eight full-time staff: one main editor, two reporters/editors, two hosts/reporters, and three reporters. We believe in the importance of a strong public radio station to a community. Its news partner is La Noticia, North Carolina’s largest Spanish language news organization. It has been serving the state’s growing Latino community for more than two decades. Its readers are predominantly immigrants from Latin America.

The Charlotte Post

The Charlotte Post Publishing Company is been the mirror to the African-American community in North Carolina's two largest media markets. The company's roots are in the AME Zion Church, where The Messenger was launched in 1878 to provide a faith-based forum for newly emancipated Black people during the Reconstruction period. It is the leading source of news and information in Charlotte's Black community, which makes up about one-third of Mecklenburg County's 1.1 million population. Its sister publication, The Triangle Tribune, was founded in 1998 and is similarly situation in the Raleigh-Durham market, which exceeds 1 million people. The 16-member staff consists of three full-time journalists and three freelance photographers and journalists.

Adam Wagner

Adam has worked for six years at The Wilmington StarNews in North Carolina covering local government, public safety, criminal justice and the environment. Since late 2016, his reporting has focused on water contamination in eastern North Carolina, while he has also covered Hurricanes Florence and Matthew and their aftermaths. He’s won awards for investigative and enterprise reporting from the North Carolina Press Association, the D.C. Press Association and the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. Adam is a graduate of Ohio University, where he was managing editor of the school paper. Watchdog reporting on Hurricane Florence recovery in Raleigh, North Carolina The News & Observer is dedicated to covering the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which destroyed lives, homes and businesses around North Carolina.  Adam is assigned to the newsroom’s ongoing efforts to cover cleanup, rebuilding and revitalizing communities following Hurricane Florence — a process that will take years. His primary focus is  investigating and reporting on how last year’s disaster disproportionately affects low-income residents and people of color in North Carolina. He works closely with our data journalist and three other reporters who are covering the flood’s aftermath. Adam reports directly to one of the newsroom’s most experienced and highly regarded editors, with assistance from the managing editor.

Zila Sanchez

Zila Sanchez reports for La Noticia, the largest Spanish language publication in North Carolina, where she focuses on affordable housing, a huge issue in Charlotte. Low-income families find it hard to afford to live in the city anymore. The issue is even bigger in the Latino community where they face added challenges of abuse and discrimination, including eviction from apartments or mobile homes, no relocation assistance and many other issues. Sanchez is a Charlotte native who knows the area well. She was the editor-in-chief of North Carolina A&T State University’s independent student newspaper, The A&T Register. While on The Register, Sanchez led her team in creating a Primary Elections Voter Guide for all the public Historically Black Colleges and Universities in North and South Carolina. Sanchez was able to participate in the Poynter Institute’s College Media Project, the Black Narrative, where the staff explored biases within local news organizations that affect the public’s perspective. She was also a speaker at the 2019 National College Media Convention and N.C. Scholastic Media Association’s Summer Institute.  

Jordan Wilkie

Jordan Wilkie writes and reports for Carolina Public Press in Asheville, North Carolina, where he covers election integrity and conditions of confinement in jails. He has previously written for Carolina Public Press, and his work has also appeared in The Guardian, the Raleigh/Durham IndyWeek and WhoWhatWhy.org. In 2018, Wilkie graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In his previous life, Wilkie worked as an administrator and instructor of educational programming in prisons and juvenile detentions in Oregon. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon.

Alex Watts

Alexandra was a 2017 Next Generation Radio Fellow with NPR in 2017. While at Arizona State University, she became the first ever audio and podcast editor for The State Press, and she worked on podcasts/audio with the news division of Arizona PBS. Watts has a BA & MMC from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She had internships with KJZZ and worked in community engagement with the PIN Bureau, where she was part of the team who won the Associated Press Media Editors’ Innovator of the Year Award for College Students.

Dante Miller

Dante Miller reports for WFAE/Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Digital Public Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, a partnership of the local NPR station and the region’s largest public library system. She focuses on expanding Wikipedia entries that both describe and impact the community and uses public forums to help get the community’s input. Miller knows the area well. She covered community-based stories during her time as a reporter and freelancer for QCityMetro, Charlotte’s leading digital platform for the African-American community. She was the Union County Reporter for Charlotte Media Group, the owners of Union County Weekly, South Charlotte Weekly, and Matthews Mint Hill Weekly. Miller is a proud alumna of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and received her Bachelor's of Science in journalism and mass communications in August 2017. As a student, she served as the first Yard Section Editor for her university newspaper, which focused on hard and campus news stories. During her free time, Miller enjoys reading, singing and writing poetry. She's a military brat who was born in Arlington, Texas, but raised in Wilson, North Carolina.

Ben Sessoms

Ben Sessoms covers housing, gentrification and related issues for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is a journalist from eastern North Carolina. Before joining RFA, Sessoms worked as a reporting fellow at News21 at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University where he and several other student journalists from across the country covered natural disaster response in the United States. Sessoms’ coverage focused on how impoverished communities in eastern North Carolina were impacted by two 500-year floods from hurricanes Matthew and Florence in 2016 and 2018. As a whole, the News21 project State of Emergency won the 2019 Investigative Reporters and Editors Student–Large award. Sessoms’ previous work can also be found in several North Carolina papers including the Statesville Record & Landmark, the Watauga Democrat, and The Appalachian, the student paper at his alma mater, Appalachian State University, where he was a top 15 debater in the U.S.