South

Emily Woodruff

Emily has been the managing health editor of Being Patient, a health news start-up exclusively covering brain health and Alzheimer’s. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in STAT News, The Baltimore Sun, Gothamist and Refinery29. Earlier she worked as a copywriter and an SEO specialist. She majored in English at the University of Florida in Gainesville and received an M.S. from the Columbia University School of Journalism. Public health in south Louisiana Emily covers healthcare and public health in south Louisiana, with a focus on the New Orleans metro region. Currently, there is not a single, full-time health reporter working for any newsroom in Louisiana, a state that sits near the bottom on nearly every U.S. public health metric. The story of healthcare is also often the story of poverty in America, and the lack of coverage of health in a poor state like Louisiana means important stories are slipping through the cracks. Emily reports to the New Orleans Metro Editor and Managing Editor and covers daily news related to all aspects of public health, including coverage of hospitals, public health officials and health agencies, academic research, and city, state, and national data. She produces enterprise and feature stories for print and online related to these and other related topics. Emily works in concert with journalists who have complementary beats, such as education, business and City Hall, to create stories that have a broader impact.

Alexandra 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. Poverty reporting in the Mississippi Delta The Mississippi Delta remains one of the most deprived regions in the country. Alex examines how poverty affects the lives of residents and the resources needed to address their critical needs.

Mississippi Today

Mississippi Today is dedicated to providing Mississippians with reporting that inspires active interest in their state and equips them to engage in community life.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting

West Virginia Public Broadcasting is a public media dual licensee — it holds the sole statewide PBS and NPR licenses in West Virginia. WVPB covers West Virginia and many of the bordering counties of its five neighboring states. WVPB’s content output is primarily audio, but they also produce video for TV and digital platforms. They produce a live television show, The Legislature Today, every weekday during West Virginia’s 60-day legislative session. WVPB has a full-time staff of 52, with several part-time and paid intern positions. The mission of West Virginia Public Broadcasting is to educate, inform and inspire residents by telling West Virginia’s story. Closed Position: This Report for America corps member is based in Charleston, the state capital, and works under the mentorship of senior reporter, Dave Mistich, on the public affairs beat, including coverage of the legislative session. This reporter works primarily in audio. Outside of the legislative session, the focus is on the southern coalfields of West Virginia. This position fills a critical coverage gap for WVPB, while also contributing to government accountability reporting in the region.

The Charlotte Observer

The Charlotte Observer is a 132-year-old news organization intensely focused on accountability reporting in south-central North Carolina region and on statewide issues that affect readers from the coast to the mountains. The Charlotte Observer works closely with sister McClatchy papers in the Carolinas to identify and report with impact on the ways that government decisions – or lack of decisions – impact the lives of North Carolinians. As the largest newspaper in the state, The Charlotte Observer frequently challenges denial or closure of public records and seeks relationships with other media organizations to press for disclosure of public information and transparency of government actions. The news organization’s coverage is heavily tilted toward Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, with a focus on watchdog reporting, open records and meetings, deeper storytelling and enterprise writing.

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.

The News & Observer

The News & Observer’s roots go back to 1865, when its predecessor The Sentinel was launched to expose corruption in the Reconstruction era. Among the News & Observer’s many awards are three Pulitzer Prizes, including the 1996 gold medal for public service. The News & Observer is the paper of record in the capital city of North Carolina, covering the statehouse, the legislature and its impact on the lives of all North Carolinians. The newspaper’s mission is to produce fearless and independent public service journalism that gives a voice to underrepresented, unheard groups and communities.

el Nuevo Herald

El Nuevo Herald is the second largest Spanish-language news outlet in the United States, covering local, national and international news for more than three decades, striving to be the most credible and dynamic source of news and information by producing journalism that makes a difference. El Nuevo Herald publishes in Spanish but also is routinely published in English in the Miami Herald. El Nuevo Herald shares a newsroom with the Miami Herald and they collaborate on a daily basis. Occasionally, the newspaper also collaborates with WLRN, an NPR affiliate that operates out of our newsroom. The newspaper’s coverage area extends well beyond the local community, reaching an audience of more than 357,000 in print and 3.9 million online. El Nuevo Herald’s digital readers stretch across South Florida, the Caribbean and Latin America.

Chattanooga Times Free Press

The Chattanooga Times Free Press is a daily, mid-sized paper serving Chattanooga, Tennessee, and 16 surrounding counties that spill into Georgia and Alabama. It is the only daily newspaper between the suburbs of Nashville and Atlanta, which are each two hours in different directions. The newspaper has two editorial pages, the liberal Times page and the conservative Free Press page, which honor the legacies of the papers the preceded the Times Free Press. In many ways, the two editorial pages reflect the coverage area and the nation’s rural-urban divide: Blue Chattanooga is surrounded by deep red rural communities.