Tennessee

Cassandra Stephenson

Cassandra Stephenson

Cassandra Stephenson covers issues impacting rural West Tennessee for The Tennessee Lookout. Prior to joining The Tennessee Lookout, Cassandra covered Metro Nashville government at The Tennessean for nearly three years, chronicling the consequences of policy decisions for residents in one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. Cassandra's post-collegiate reporting career began in West Tennessee in 2018 when she moved from her hometown in Ventura County, California after graduating from Pepperdine University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. There, she reported on breaking news and justice for a 13-county region, publishing award-winning investigations on local physicians’ involvement in the opioid epidemic and conditions in local for-profit prisons. Cassandra joined The Tennessean as a business reporter in 2020, covering pandemic-related business challenges including unemployment, workplace safety and eviction. Outside of the newsroom, you'll find Cassandra immersed in her latest art project or baking endeavor.  

Rebecca E.J. Cadenhead

Rebecca E.J. Cadenhead covers youth and juvenile justice for MLK50. Cadenhead graduated from Harvard University in 2023, where she studied Philosophy and African American Studies. Cadenhead has served as a Puffin Fellow at The Nation and a Ledecky Fellow at Harvard Magazine. She has also held several editing positions, including Associate Editor at The Harvard Crimson and Features Editor at the Harvard Advocate. Her work, which spans long-form journalism and narrative nonfiction, has been awarded a 2023 CASE Award and a 2022 Pushcart Prize.

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is an award-winning nonprofit digital newsroom, and focused on the intersection of poverty, power and policy. Its vision echoes Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream: a nation where all residents, especially workers, have enough resources to thrive, and where public and private policy supports their success.

Tennessee Lookout

The Tennessee Lookout is a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog news organization dedicated to telling the stories of politics and policy that affect the people of the Volunteer State. We expose the relationships between politics, people and policy and we hold the powerful accountable.

Brittany Brown

Brittany Brown covers workers and labor in Memphis, Tennessee for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, which reports on policy, poverty and power in Memphis and Shelby County. Prior to joining MLK50, Brown reported on the criminal justice system in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana for the Gulf States Newsroom, NPR’s southern news hub. She was the inaugural Emerging Reporters Fellow at Mississippi Today, where she covered the state’s criminal legal system through the lens of justice and equity. Brown’s journalism career began in student media at the University of Mississippi, where she worked as a reporter and editor for the student newspaper, tv station and yearbook. In college she worked as a breaking news intern with The Baltimore Sun and was a reporting fellow with Carnegie-Knight News21 at Arizona State University, where she reported on hate crimes in America. Brown holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and is currently completing her master’s documentary thesis project in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.

Keely Brewer

Keely Brewer covers the environmental impacts on communities of color for the Daily Memphian, an online publication in Memphis, Tennessee. Brewer is a recent graduate of The University of Alabama, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in news media and served as editor-in-chief of The Crimson White. While there, Brewer launched a campus investigation into COVID-19 reporting tools in partnership with the Poynter Institute. She has covered Tuscaloosa, Alabama as an intern at the Tuscaloosa News, and has reported on the impact of faith-based diabetes programs at the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting.

Laura Kebede-Twumasi

Laura Kebede-Twumasi is launching the Civil Wrongs project at the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis in Tennessee. Previously, she wrote and hosted a WKNO public television special on unresolved civil rights crimes in the Memphis area, and spearheaded a partnership between The New Tri-State Defender and WKNO public radio on a forgotten civil rights journalism hero, L. Alex Wilson. Laura Kebede-Twumasi is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and has a decade of reporting experience, including five years writing about education inequities in Memphis for Chalkbeat.

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is an award-winning nonprofit digital newsroom, and focused on the intersection of poverty, power and policy. Its vision echoes Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream: a nation where all residents, especially workers, have enough resources to thrive, and where public and private policy supports their success.

Daily Memphian

The Daily Memphian is the largest, nonprofit daily news site in the country that covers all local news, including sports, things to do and dining. It reports critical news, holds political, business and community leaders accountable, and engages with and entertains readers.

Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis

The Institute for Public Service Reporting is a nonprofit newsroom on the campus of the University of Memphis specializing in investigative reporting and in-depth explanatory journalism—an arm of the university with a firewall protecting their editorial independence. Its mission is to provide robust, civic-minded journalism that promotes a vibrant democracy, fosters inclusiveness and enriches the lives of the people of greater Memphis, including many underserved communities. Stories appear on its news site, and on The Daily Memphian, a nonprofit news site.