Southwest

Allyson Ortegon

Allyson Ortegon is working for KUT in Austin, Texas where she covers growth and development in nearby Hays County. Before that, she covered politics and policy, including the 86th Texas Legislature, during fellowships with The Texas Tribune and with Texas NPR affiliate stations. She wrote for The Alcalde, the award-winning alumni magazine published by The University of Texas at Austin since 1913. In an earlier stint at KUT, Austin’s NPR Station, she participated in  NPR's Next Generation Radio project. At UT, she reported across radio, television and print media for student publications including The Daily Texan and Texas Student Television. She will graduate with a degree in journalism and a secondary concentration in business. She is a two-time recipient of awards from The Headliner’s Foundation of Texas and she received the Jo Caldwell Meyer Scholarship from the Women Communicators of Austin, the Bob Schenkkan Endowed Presidential Scholarship, and the Carmage and Martha Ann Walls Foundation Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Journalism.

Haley Samsel

Haley Samsel covers the consequences of economic growth for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She has covered everything from cybersecurity to home medical equipment as an associate editor for HME Business, Mobility Management and Security Today magazines in Dallas. Before graduating from American University in 2019, she reported on Capitol Hill for The Texas Tribune and interned for NPR’s education desk, USA Today College, The Investigative Reporting Workshop and The Washington Monthly. She served as editor-in-chief of The Eagle, the university’s student newspaper, where she worked with students to publish innovative digital projects and accountability reporting. More recently, Haley contributed articles on youth issues to YR Media. She grew up in the Dallas suburb of Plano.

Sam Metz

Sam Metz covers the Nevada Legislature for The Associated Press with a special emphasis on water, education and health care. Metz most recently covered California politics for The Desert Sun and USA TODAY Network in Palm Springs, Calif. His work on wildfires, criminal justice and agriculture has won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association and IRE. He previously spent two years in Morocco researching and reporting on migration in the Mediterranean as a Fulbright Scholar and his work has also appeared in VICE News, Quartz and The New Republic. He grew up in Illinois, swam at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials and graduated from UC Berkeley, where he was part of the Men’s Swimming team that won two NCAA championships.

Alejandra Martinez

Alejandra Martinez reports for KERA in Dallas as well as The Texas Newsroom, a journalism collaboration among the public radio stations of Texas and NPR, where she covers the impact of Covid-19 and its associated economic fallout on marginalized communities. Before joining Report for America, Martinez was a producer at WLRN, South Florida's NPR station where she covered immigration, marginalized communities, and the local arts scene. She would book, write, and produce stories for and the station’s daily talk show, “Sundial,” and she was part of Public Radio International’s (PRI) “Every 30 Seconds” election project, a collaborative public media reporting project tracing the young Latino electorate leading up to the 2020 presidential election and beyond. A native Texan, Martinez began her broadcast career working with KUT, Austin’s NPR station, first as an intern and later a producer. In Texas, Martinez participated in NPR’s Next-Generation Radio project, a week-long journalism boot camp, where she covered Houston’s recovery post-Hurricane Harvey in 2018. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism in 2017.  

Sara Ernst

Sara Willa Ernst reports for KERA and The Texas Newsroom, a journalism collaboration among the public radio stations of Texas and NPR, where she covers health disparities related to factors including income that affect Houston communities. Ernst was a Reporting Fellow at New Hampshire Public Radio, working both in daily news and long-form podcasting. During her time there, she was a producer for the podcasts The Second Greatest Show On Earth and Outside/In. She co-reported a two-part podcast on sex education in New Hampshire, covering topics from the statewide curriculum, abstinence-based education, LGBTQ inclusivity, consent and more. Before working on the podcast team, she was a General Assignment Reporter in the NHPR newsroom, covering the charter school debate embroiling the Granite State and the 2020 New Hampshire Presidential Primary. After graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Ernst interned for NPR in Washington D.C. She previously held internships at Nashville Public Radio and WBUR Boston. She was a Chips Quinn Scholar in 2018 and is a member of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Mark Rosenberg

Mark Rosenberg reports for The Victoria Advocate, the second oldest paper in Texas, where he reports on the rural counties surrounding the small city on the coastal plains. Rosenberg reported on criminal justice as an intern at the Cincinnati Enquirer, where he contributed to Accused, the Enquirer ’s true-crime podcast. Previously, he worked as a breaking news intern at the Toledo Blade, reporting on public policy and rural politics. He earned his B.A. from Yale University, where he served as editor-in-chief of The New Journal, a magazine that publishes narrative and investigative reporting. He is from Lexington, Massachusetts.

Victoria Advocate

Established in 1846 – the same year the Republic of Texas joined the Union – the Victoria Advocate has a rich tradition of local ownership and stewardship of its community. It was named the Newspaper of the Year in 2014 by the Local Media Association.  

Texas Public Radio

Texas Public Radio operates seven public radio stations, serving a wide swath of South Central Texas. Our aggregated service area consists of 22 counties covering 20,000 square miles. Two of our stations (KSTX, 24/7 news and information, and KPAC, 24/7 classical music) serve the San Antonio area. The other five stations provide service to the Hill Country, the Highland Lakes, Snyder, Del Rio and Gonzales. These are our Tex-Net stations.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

We are a legacy news organization with a well-known name and brand in Fort Worth, dating back to our founding in the early 1900s in a city that proudly says it is "Where the West begins." Our goal is to be first and best with breaking news in Fort Worth and Tarrant County and for non-breaking news reporters to be heavily driven by enterprise and accountability reporting, rather than turn-of-the-screw process reporting.

The Dallas Morning News

This beat focuses on coverage of southern Dallas, with a special emphasis on building trust with the African-American community and reflecting community life, diverse voices and neighborhood milestones and events on our website, in our social channels and in our pages. We envision that the most urgent issues to cover here include income inequality, housing and jobs. The reporter would work closely with and be mentored by our reporters covering Dallas city hall and Dallas County, as well as our business reporters.