Tennessee

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is an award-winning nonprofit digital newsroom based in Memphis and focused on the intersection of poverty, power and policy. Launched in April 2017 during the run-up to the 50th anniversary of Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, we frame the news from the perspective of the people King would have been aligned with had he not been assassinated. Through our three-year partnership with ProPublica, MLK50’s RFA fellows will have access to ProPublica training and may have the opportunity to collaborate on stories co-published with the national investigative reporting outlet.  

WPLN

Nashville Public Radio’s flagship news station, WPLN 90.3, is a dynamic local news provider that reaches more than 20 counties in Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. With a potential audience of over 2 million listeners, many of whom are located in rural areas outside of Metropolitan Nashville, our content is distributed through multiple delivery platforms and channels, via FM, AM, HD radio, computer streams, a robust website and podcasts. WPLN has an award-winning news team of 10 journalists: two editors, five reporters, two host/reporters and a digital director. Its mission is to create stories that help our audience understand the most important issues facing the community.

Commercial Appeal

The Commercial Appeal is 179 years old and has been a pillar of the Mid-South Region. It is based in Memphis, which sits at the nexus of east Arkansas, north Mississippi and West Tennessee, and has long been known as a regional newspaper. It’s focused on Shelby County, Tennessee and DeSoto County, Mississippi. Blacks represent 52 percent of Shelby County’s residents. The newsroom has 27 full-time staffers and two part-time staffers. Four staffers are editors who supervise other staffers.

Carrington Tatum

Carrington Tatum covers poverty, power and public policy in Memphis and Shelby County for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. He has interned with The Dallas Morning News to bolster coverage of the historically Black and brown and underserved southern side of Dallas. He also interned with The Texas Tribune, covering mainly homelessness and higher education. He cut his journalism teeth as a first-generation college student from Garland, Texas, at Texas State University, where he was the first Black editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The University Star.

Hannah Grabenstein

Hannah Grabenstein covers poverty, power and public policy in Memphis and Shelby County for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Previously, she covered state and local politics for the Associated Press in Little Rock, and has reported on Arkansas law enforcement, environmental issues and history. Her reporting on truancy in Arkansas schools won second place for investigative reporting at the Society of Professional Journalists Arkansas Pro Chapter Diamond Awards in 2019. She’s also been a producer for PBS Washington Week and previously was a production assistant and digital writer for PBS NewsHour. Grabenstein was editor-in-chief of The Point News, the newspaper for St. Mary’s College of Maryland, from which she graduated magna cume laude in 2012. She grew up in Columbia, Maryland, and is an avid Baltimore Orioles fan.

WPLN

Nashville Public Radio’s flagship news station, WPLN 90.3, is a dynamic local news provider that reaches more than 20 counties in Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. With a potential audience of over 2 million listeners, many of whom are located in rural areas outside of Metropolitan Nashville, our content is distributed through multiple delivery platforms and channels, via FM, AM, HD radio, computer streams, a robust website and podcasts. WPLN has an award-winning news team of 10 journalists: two editors, five reporters, two host/reporters and a digital director. Its mission is to create stories that help our audience understand the most important issues facing the community.

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism

MLK50: Justice Through Journalism is an award-winning nonprofit digital newsroom based in Memphis and focused on the intersection of poverty, power and policy. Launched in April 2017 during the run-up to the 50th anniversary of Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, we frame the news from the perspective of the people King would have been aligned with had he not been assassinated. Through our three-year partnership with ProPublica, MLK50’s RFA fellows will have access to ProPublica training and may have the opportunity to collaborate on stories co-published with the national investigative reporting outlet.  

Wyatt Massey

Wyatt has covered religion, immigration and social services for the Frederick News-Post in Maryland. There and as a freelance writer, he has covered stories ranging from childhood malnutrition in Haiti to gentrification in Brooklyn to faith in rural Kansas to heroin and opioid addiction in Milwaukee. Massey was an O’Hare Fellow at America, a respected national Catholic magazine. As an intern at The Baltimore Sun, he covered crime, along with researching for and helping craft Justin George’s yearlong “Shoot to Kill” investigation of US gun homicide trends. Wyatt grew up on a family farm in Hollandale, Wisconsin and majored in English at Marquette University.

Samantha Max

Samantha Max was an investigative reporting intern for the Medill Justice Project and a bilingual multimedia news intern at Hoy, Chicago Tribune’s Spanish-language daily. She returned to her hometown of Baltimore in 2015 and again in 2016 to work as a newsroom intern for NPR-affiliate WYPR. She has written on immigration and the criminal justice system. Samantha spent her first year with Report for America at The Telegraph in Macon, Georgia, where she covered health and inequity in central Georgia. For her second year as a corps member, she’ll cover the criminal justice system for Nashville Public Radio.  

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.