The Kansas City Beacon

The Kansas City Beacon is a non-profit online news outlet focused on in-depth journalism in the public interest. It launched in March 2020 and is part of The Beacon, a regional nonprofit news network serving Kansas and Missouri. Beacon stories are revelatory, contextual, data-driven and solutions-driven. Our reporting centers around issues in healthcare, education, economics, environment and civic engagement.

The Wichita Beacon

The Wichita Beacon is a nonprofit, digital-only news outlet based Wichita, Kansas, launching in Summer 2021. Our mission: To spur reforms in the public interest by shining light on wrongdoings and abuse by government, businesses and other institutions in the region through in-depth, solutions-driven journalism. The Beacon’s sister newsroom in Kansas City was founded in April 2019 and began publishing in early 2020.

Mahoning Matters

Mahoning Matters is a local digital news startup serving Mahoning County, Ohio that is starting publication in early October 2019. We are the first site of The Compass Experiment, a partnership between Google and McClatchy to experiment with sustainable revenue models for local news.  

The Wichita Beacon

The Wichita Beacon is a nonprofit, digital-only news outlet based Wichita, Kansas, launching in Summer 2021. Our mission: To spur reforms in the public interest by shining light on wrongdoings and abuse by government, businesses and other institutions in the region through in-depth, solutions-driven journalism. The Beacon’s sister newsroom in Kansas City was founded in April 2019 and began publishing in early 2020.

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.

Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

The Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting is an independent, nonpartisan and collaborative nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide, data-driven investigative reporting. AZCIR’s mission is to produce, foster and promote investigative journalism through original and collaborative reporting, often using data, and by training the next generation of investigative journalists.

Black Voice News

A property of Voice Media Ventures, Black Voice News focuses on advocacy, solutions-oriented and data-driven reporting. The publication has addressed issues including disparities in health, education, police violence, social justice and civil rights battles. It 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.

PublicSource

PublicSource is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, digital-first media organization dedicated to serving Pittsburgh and the surrounding region with public-service reporting and news analysis. Its mission is to inspire critical thinking and bold ideas through local journalism rooted in facts, diverse voices and the pursuit of transparency. PublicSource currently covers K-12 education, local government, economic development, the environment, health and public safety.

Rita Oceguera

Rita Oceguera covers communities that ring Chicago, including Aurora, Cicero, Elgin, Joliet and Waukegan, for Injustice Watch. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Northwestern University, where she studied social justice and investigative reporting and focused on a range of Latino issues. During her internship at The Bubble in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oceguera dove deep into the inequalities that women face as soccer players and sharpened her skills as a video editor. She then worked with The Chicago Reporter to examine the spread of business vacancies in Chicago and analyzed a prosperous Latino neighborhood. Her partnership with The Chicago Reporter led her into an investigation of the complexities that low income students face when applying to colleges. Originally from Aurora, Oceguera now lives in Chicago with her fiancé, her pet axolotl (a.k.a. a Mexican walking fish) and an abundance of plants.

Abbey Marshall

Abbey Marshall reports for The Devil Strip, a community-owned, independent news outlet in Akron, Ohio, where she focuses on how economic trends affect ordinary citizens. Marshall is a 2020 graduate of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, where she studied on a full academic scholarship awarded to a student pursuing a career in reporting. Throughout her collegiate career, she completed two internships at The Columbus Dispatch as a metro reporter and web producer. She recently returned from Washington, D.C., where she covered breaking news as an intern at Politico. Having worked at a nonprofit in Mumbai, studied French and media in Aix-en-Provence and covered politics in the nation’s capital, she ultimately realized she missed the state she calls home and the fight for solid local journalism.