DATA

The Connecticut Mirror

The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet with a very clear mission: Produce deep reporting on government policies and politics, to become an invaluable resource for anyone who lives, works or cares about Connecticut, and to hold our policymakers accountable for their decisions and actions. The Mirror’s staff consists of award-winning editors and reporters with decades of experience in Connecticut newsrooms or working for other national or state news operations.

The Associated Press

About the News Organization: The Associated Press is a global news agency that began 172 years ago as a cooperative of five New York City newspapers. We have 263 locations in more than 100 countries, providing journalism to roughly 15,000 media outlets around the world. AP sets standards for ethics and excellence. AP has won 52 Pulitzer Prizes, including the 2016 gold medal for Public Service for an investigation into labor abuses in the seafood industry, reports that freed more than 2,000 slaves. We cover every single statehouse, and have beat teams for topics such as immigration, education and state government. AP’s seven news bureaus in the northeast U.S. provide vital local and regional news to 378 newsrooms. Closed Position: The Report for America corps member works in the New York state capitol alongside veteran statehouse staff to report on criminal justice issues across the state, including issues of poverty, race and changing policy on who is prosecuted, how they are incarcerated and how politics in Trump’s America are influencing those trends. The reporter has access to colleagues on the national state government reporting team, data experts and a network of colleagues with deep experience reporting on government. AP’s team of reporters in Washington, D.C. also helps the reporter understand the connections between state and local trends. The reporter produces a balance of spot news and enterprise work, with an emphasis on data-driven stories that can be distributed to AP customers around the state. Preferred Skills: Data journalism

The Charlotte Observer

The Charlotte Observer is a 132-year-old news organization intensely focused on accountability reporting in south-central North Carolina region and on statewide issues that affect readers from the coast to the mountains. The Charlotte Observer works closely with sister McClatchy papers in the Carolinas to identify and report with impact on the ways that government decisions – or lack of decisions – impact the lives of North Carolinians. As the largest newspaper in the state, The Charlotte Observer frequently challenges denial or closure of public records and seeks relationships with other media organizations to press for disclosure of public information and transparency of government actions. The news organization’s coverage is heavily tilted toward Charlotte and Mecklenburg County, with a focus on watchdog reporting, open records and meetings, deeper storytelling and enterprise writing.

The Salt Lake Tribune

The Salt Lake Tribune is Utah’s largest daily newspaper, founded as an alternative voice in 1871. From air quality to cultural trends to analysis of the Utah Jazz, the news organization’s goal is to inform, enlighten and empower Utahns with news they can trust. The Salt Lake Tribune is Utah’s leader in accountability journalism and investigative reporting, consistently pushing for access, open records and transparency through requests, appeals, legislation and, when necessary, litigation.  

Laurel Demkovich

Laurel Demkovich reports for The Spokesman-Review based in Spokane, Washington, and covers the Washington Legislature and state government. After graduating from Indiana University in May 2019, Demkovich completed an internship at The Washington Post where she covered cops and courts for the Post’s local desk. Demkovich also completed internships at the Tampa Bay Times and the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northampton, Massachusetts, covering local government, breaking news, and general assignments. While at Indiana University, Demkovich served as managing editor of the school’s student newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student. She has won several awards for her writing from the Indiana Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Indiana Collegiate Press Association named her Brook Baker Collegiate Journalist of the Year in 2019. She also won first place in feature writing from The Hearst Journalism Awards Program.

Brittany Callan

Brittany Callan reports for The Beacon, a nonprofit, digital news organization in Kansas City, Missouri, where she focuses on health and the environment and the connections between the two. Before joining Report for America, Callan was a communications associate at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a freelance fact-checker for Discover Magazine. She has reported on a labor union movement in the service industry for Milwaukee Magazine and research in bioprosthetic ovaries for Northwestern Research News. She graduated with an M.S. in Journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2018, where she specialized in health, environment and science. She holds a B.S. in biomedical engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering in 2015.

Jackie Botts

Jackie is a data and multimedia reporter originally from Southern California. She has interned on the Data and Enterprise desk for Reuters News and for her hometown paper, The Santa Barbara Independent. Her reporting on immigration, the environment, and wildfires has appeared in Pacific Standard, SFGate, Public Radio International’s “The World,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, Peninsula Press and the Half Moon Bay Review. A graduate of Stanford University’s master’s program in journalism, she received the James S. Robinson student journalism award for a multimedia series that documented the impacts of wildfires on immigrant communities in Northern California in 2017. The California legislature’s treatment of poverty issues Jackie covers poverty with a legislative and data focus as part of “The California Divide.” Poverty is the biggest coverage gap in the state. In response to this, CALmatters, McClatchy’s five California news organizations and the 25 Digital First newsrooms have created a news hub with a collaboration project on the topic. “The California Divide” is an unprecedented news partnership that combines the strengths of respected news-gathering organizations across the state. The shared goal is to build a sustainable and replicable model for data-driven, change-making journalism in this critically underserved coverage area. Report for America has teamed up with three of the new hub’s newsrooms to offer three new corps member placements: CALmatters in Sacramento, The Fresno Bee in Fresno and The Mercury News in San Jose.