Oregon

Underscore.news

Underscore.news is a nonprofit public service reporting team. Its mission is to produce collaborative journalism framed by justice to promote civic engagement and a fair-minded society. The reporting is shared at no charge and is reposted by tribal and nontribal media throughout Oregon, the Pacific Northwest and nationally.

Arden Barnes

Arden Barnes is a visual journalist with the Herald and News in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where she focuses on covering the Klamath Project, a historic dam removal project, and its environmental and community impact. Before this, Barnes was a freelance photojournalist and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, the Lexington Herald-Leader and USA Today. Born in Harrison County, Kentucky, Barnes was photo editor and then art director of the Kentucky Kernel, the student newspaper at the University of Kentucky. In 2018, Barnes was awarded the Reinke Grant for visual storytelling and participated in a project to help create a visual archive of daily life in Harrison County. Her photography earned her a spot in The Eddie Adams Workshop and multiple awards, including honors from the National Press Photographers Association and the Kentucky News Photographers Association.

Dora Totoian

Dora Totoian reports on issues affecting agricultural workers in the mid-Willamette Valley for the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon. Before coming to the Statesman, Totoian covered city government for the News-Register in McMinnville, the heart of Oregon's wine country. She reported on land use, housing, and the disproportionate effects of the pandemic. Totoian was born in Romania and grew up in southern Oregon. She graduated from the University of Portland with a B.A. in Spanish and political science in 2020, but credits her work as a reporter and later the opinion editor at The Beacon, the student newspaper, as having the biggest impact on her.

Herald and News (Klamath Falls)

The Herald and News has operated in Klamath County, in southwest Oregon, for more than a century. We cover the the city of Klamath Falls and Klamath County, in addition to neighboring Lake County and some communities across the nearby state border into California.  

Statesman Journal

The Statesman Journal covers the middle section of the Willamette Valley between Oregon’s coastal mountain range and the Cascade Mountains. The Gannett-owned newsroom is based in Salem, the state capital, about an hour from Portland and the Oregon coast. Its primary mission is governmental accountability and watchdog reporting in and around Salem and state government.

Latisha Jensen

Latisha Jensen reports for Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon, where she covers political representation on the city’s East Side. Jensen moved to Portland following graduation in May 2019 from Washington State University. She became a part of the freelance team for Street Roots, a local weekly publication focused on homelessness and underserved communities. During her senior year at WSU, she helped edit an annual university publication, the Visitor Magazine, and also freelanced writing. In the meantime, she was working on an investigative piece published in The Spokesman-Review about a young woman incarcerated for illegal substance abuse and distribution. The piece, which touched on the regional and national opioid crisis, was a finalist for a Society of Professional Journalists award in the General News Reporting category. Also during her final year, she was one of six students selected to go abroad during spring break for a journalism trip to Guatemala, where she was able to use her Spanish-speaking skills, which she also honed during study abroad in Grenada, Spain.

Alex Schwartz

Alex Schwartz covers endangered species and water issues for the Herald and News in Klamath Falls, Ore., whose readership spans four large rural counties in southern Oregon and northern California. A writer, photographer and graphic designer reporting at the intersection of science and culture, he was previously a freelance data reporter with The New York Times, helping track every coronavirus case in the U.S. Alex has also interned at Popular Science, where he reported on daily scientific research and used science to help explain the news. He has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, where he specialized in health, science and environmental reporting and was a managing editor of The Daily Northwestern. Alex is originally from Orlando, Florida.

Associated Press

The Associated Press is a global news agency that began 172 years ago as a cooperative of five New York City newspapers. With 263 locations in more than 100 countries, AP provides journalism to roughly 15,000 media outlets around the world. AP sets standards for ethics and excellence, and has won 52 Pulitzer Prizes, including the 2016 gold medal for Public Service for an investigation into labor abuses in the seafood industry, reports that freed more than 2,000 slaves. AP’s seven news bureaus in the northeast U.S. provide vital local and regional news to 378 newsrooms.

Willamette Week

Willamette Week is the first alternative newsweekly in the country to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. Since our founding in 1974, this newsroom is focused on enterprise reporting that gives voice to the unheard, changes laws and removes the corrupt from power. In the past decade, our reporting has led to the resignation of a sitting Oregon governor, fundamental reforms in the state’s foster-care system, and an investigation of police communications with right-wing extremists. We produce a weekly print edition, a daily newsletter, and 35 online stories each week.  

Herald and News (Klamath Falls)

The Herald and News is the major local journalistic news source in our region as it is the only daily newspaper in three of the four rural counties we cover in southern Oregon and northern California. The H&N, which got its start in 1906 when it was known as the Evening Herald, is a five-day a week print and online newspaper, with a strong social media presence, that also produces quarterly regional lifestyles magazines, as well as other special feature tabs.