Texas

Houston Defender Network

The Houston Defender was founded in October 1930 and serves the Houston area which includes Harris, Fort Bend and Brazoria counties. As Houston’s leading Black information source, the Defender continues to provide the community with news, sports, lifestyle, business, politics and more.

KVIA-TV/ABC-7

KVIA-TV/ABC-7 is the decades-long dominant television station serving the El Paso, Texas-Las Cruces, New Mexico region. We stand on a solid journalistic foundation reinforced by experienced managers committed to serving our community while training the next generation of storytellers. KVIA is owned by a 4th generation family company, News-Press & Gazette, which had its genesis in newspapers. We strive to enrich the Borderland through responsible journalism.

Longview News-Journal

The Longview News-Journal is part of third-generation, family-owned community newspaper and multimedia news organization. We are committed to digital-first community journalism—not just reporting the news, but also holding officials accountable for their actions. We work to keep the public informed of the news through our print and digital platforms. We strive to be fair, accurate and respectful while reporting the news, from hard-hitting investigations to the daily news and features. Our goal is to use all available journalism tools in the service of reporting on, and bettering, our community.

The Dallas Morning News

Founded in 1885, the Dallas Morning News is Texas’ leading news organization and is the winner of nine Pulitzer Prizes. It has one of the largest newsrooms in the Southwest. In 2015, the DMN was in the first group of news organizations to go through a digital transformation initiative known as Table Stakes, launched by the Knight Foundation and Temple University. Since then, the DMN has been a leader in digital innovation among local news organizations. The News’ mission is “making our communities stronger and more prosperous through quality journalism and innovative marketing solutions.”

The Texas Newsroom/KERA

NPR and Texas public radio stations collaborated to form the Texas News Hub. It’s the first step in a systemwide collaborative project to create a nationwide virtual public radio newsroom of 1,000-plus journalists. The collaboration includes two daily, hour-long statewide programs (Texas Standard and Think) and will soon include six daily statewide newscasts, and a statewide digital news desk. The Hub is working to hire and train freelance and small station reporters to provide news service to underserved communities in the state’s news deserts.

Leo Bertucci

Leo Bertucci covers energy and environment for the Victoria Advocate in Victoria, Texas. Prior to joining the Advocate, Bertucci served as a newsletter editor and news reporter for Western Kentucky University’s student newspaper, the College Heights Herald. Bertucci also wrote feature stories and previewed local events as a summer intern for the Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky. When he is not writing stories, Bertucci enjoys visiting baseball stadiums and eating hot peppers.

Jeffrey Ruiz

Jeffrey Ruiz covers disinvested neighborhoods in search of solutions for the city's systemic inequalities in Dallas, Texas for Dallas Free Press. While an undergraduate at the University of North Texas, Ruiz was a special contributor for The Dallas Morning News and reported on a city redevelopment project in McKinney, Texas that cleared an entire mobile home community. His bilingual skills in Spanish played a major role in this investigative piece. Ruiz enrolled in a practicum with The North Texas Daily as a news reporter covering social issues at the local and county level, based on initiatives and programs declared by the city council and the administration of UNT. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism with a concentration in digital and print media. Whenever he isn’t reporting, Ruiz spends his time serving the community through his local church.

Kierra Sam

Kierra Sam is a political reporter for the Houston Defender Network, covering issues of environmental racism, criminal justice, voter suppression and more. A Texas native with a passion for storytelling and keeping communities informed about the world around them, Kierra attended the University of Houston and received her bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism and a minor in Spanish. While at the university, she worked on several video projects with different departments and also interned at KPRC Channel 2 News in Houston. Kierra started her professional journalism career as a digital MSJ at an NBC/ABC news affiliate television station in Beaumont, Texas. She has reported on stories covering hurricanes, plant explosions, criminal investigations, as well as profile pieces. Outside of news, Kierra likes to go to music festivals, take road trips and explore new places with family and friends.

Caroline Love

Caroline Love is the Collin County reporter at KERA in North Texas, an NPR affiliate station and the leader of The Texas Newsroom, a public radio journalism collaboration across the state. Previously, Love covered daily news at Houston's NPR station, Houston Public Media. She holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University—with an emphasis on investigative social justice journalism—where she reported feature stories that aired on KERA and the Texas Standard. In her free time, she enjoys bullet journaling and attempting to recreate the recipes she finds on TikTok.

Chase Cofield

Chase Cofield covers the rural communities surrounding Victoria, Texas as staff photographer for the Victoria Advocate. Before joining Report for America, Cofield worked on the photo desk at The Daily Tar Heel, UNC’s independent student newspaper, covering a variety of stories ranging from sports to local communities. Cofield also was a staff photographer for Coulture Magazine, a student-run fashion magazine. He shadowed photographers on assignments for Indy Week and was a 2021 summer fellow for Education NC, where he documented and photographed summer school programs in North Carolina. Cofield enjoys DJing and music production. He was a DJ for his campus radio station, WXYC 89.3, and co-coordinated one of their specialty shows, New Science Experience.