DATA

Cora Lewis

Cora Lewis covers workers and the business of agriculture for The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit newsroom based in Champaign, Illinois. Prior to joining The Midwest Center, Lewis reported on labor and breaking news for BuzzFeed News, where she received a Front Page Award from The Newswomen’s Club of New York for stories covering on-call scheduling. Her work has led to the resignation of an abusive CEO and has been featured on “This American Life.” She has followed minimum wage movements, teachers’ strikes, automation, the on-demand economy, alternative organizing models and union politics. Born and raised in New York City, Lewis received her bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Yale University and her master’s in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis.

Hannah Schoenbaum

Hannah Schoenbaum covers government and politics for The Associated Press, with a focus on the North Carolina General Assembly and the state’s congressional races. Schoenbaum previously covered Congress for The Hill, a political news site, and the Albany Times Union while a graduate student at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and was a regular contributor at USA Today. Her in-depth reporting on inequities against Black farmers and urban Native Americans has been cited on the congressional record and helped inform legislation. She has covered election security for the NBC News Vote Watch team, investigated wrongful evictions for The Boston Globe and questioned presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg about corporate influence in politics, live on CNN. An alumna of Boston University, she got her start in state government reporting as the Massachusetts Statehouse reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. She is a proud member of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists.

James Pollard

James Pollard covers state government and inequality for The Associated Press in Columbia, South Carolina. Before joining the Report for America corps, he earned his bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science at Northwestern University. There, he served as managing editor of The Daily Northwestern and worked as a research assistant in the political science department. Pollard has reported on Texas politics and policy as a fellow with The Texas Tribune, interned on the NBCUniversal digital team, and covered his hometown of St. Louis as an intern with the Riverfront Times. In his free time, Pollard enjoys playing guitar, cooking and hiking.

Jesse Bedayn

Jesse Bedayn reports on Colorado’s Statehouse with a focus on housing for The Associated Press. A second-year corps member, he previously covered California’s wealth inequality for The Mercury News and CalMatters, connecting policy decisions to the voices of those impacted on the ground. An investigation by Bedayn exposed how low-income seniors become stranded in nursing homes and how their pleas for help go unanswered. That investigation was carried over from his work at the Investigative Reporting Program and as a stringer for The New York Times. He holds a master’s degree in narrative writing and investigative reporting from UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, and a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Kent in England. Having grown up in California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, Bedayn can be found bumming around the wild or woodworking.

Mountain State Spotlight

This new investigative and enterprise hub was launched in 2020 and is led by longtime West Virginia journalists Greg Moore, a former editor at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, and Ken Ward Jr., a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant winner for his longtime work covering coal mining and other polluting industries. The staff includes four current RFA Corps members.

Tampa Bay Times

The Tampa Bay Times is the largest newspaper in Florida, with an award-winning history of investigative, narrative and enterprise journalism. We have 126 journalists covering three counties and the state of Florida. That includes 63 reporters and 25 editors. Ambition runs deep. In the past six months, our reporters uncovered an intelligence-based policing program in nearby Pasco County meant to stop crime before it happened. As the pandemic took hold, we built a Scrapbook to capture what was happening to people’s lives, organizing dozens of contributions from readers. And we're two years into an astonishing story about black cemeteries across the Tampa Bay area that time and development forgot. The ownership structure is unique in journalism. The visionary owner, Nelson Poynter, bequeathed the newspaper to a school for journalists here in St. Petersburg, now known as the Poynter Institute, to protect our independence.

Black Voice News

Black Voice News, a news site, focuses on advocacy, solutions-oriented and data-driven reporting. It has addressed issues like disparities in health and education, police violence, social justice and civil rights battles. BVN has chronicled some of the most important stories impacting the lives of Black Californians, and given voice to the community while expanding its scope of civic involvement.

AL.com

AL.com is the largest news site in Alabama, and part of the Alabama Media Group. The site has a statewide focus and grew out of the 2012 online combination of the Mobile Press-Register, The Birmingham News and The Huntsville Times, which remain news sources for print readers in those communities. AL.com operates hubs in those three cities, and has 75 reporters, editors, digital producers and videographers based throughout the state.

Bangor Daily News

A 132-year-old business owned by one family, the Bangor Daily News increasingly serves the entire state with an earlier shift to digital than most midsize papers. This news organization prizes strong journalism that serves readers, and the 127-person team is young, scrappy, and hungry to grow the BDN's journalism, capacity and public service.

Community Impact Newspaper

Community Impact Newspaper, a hyperlocal paper started in 2005, has grown to 35 monthly papers in the Austin, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Nashville metros.This news organization delivers its free papers to 2.7 million mailboxes monthly, and offers free daily digital to support communities.