Border Belt Independent
The Border Belt Independent is a nonprofit, digital newsroom that focuses on issues and challenges that affect Bladen, Columbus, Robeson, and Scotland counties in southeastern North Carolina.
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Andy Lusk
Andy Lusk is the mid-cities communities reporter for NPR member station KERA in Dallas. He is a returning Report for America corps member, having spent two years with KUCB, the NPR member station serving Alaska's Aleutian and Pribilof Islands. While in Alaska, Andy was an award-winning general assignment reporter with a focus on local and tribal government. He previously reported for InvestmentWires, a financial trade publication based in New York City. Born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina, Andy grew up on Carolina barbecue but is willing to give Texas dry rubs a try. He spends his free time hiking and writing fiction. If you run into him in the wild, tell him about your favorite book. Andy is an alumnus of New York University with a bachelor's degree in sociology.
Jorgelina Manna-Rea
Jorgelina Manna-Rea is an environmental reporter for the Kingsport Times News. Before joining the team in Kingsport, she was a producer at NPR and WAMU's live talk show 1A. There, she produced a variety of conversations ranging from how communities recover from disasters to what it means to love. She also produced and reported at NPR and WBUR’s "Here & Now" and NPR member station WUSF, respectively. While studying at the University of South Florida, she was a staff writer and assistant news editor at The Oracle, the student-run newspaper.
Gerard Edic
Gerard Edic covers the effects of gun violence on LeFlore County in the Mississippi Delta at The Greenwood Commonwealth. This marks his second stint at the newspaper, where he began his journalism career as a general assignment reporter. Most recently, Edic worked at PBS News, where he assisted with research and editorial production for PBS News Weekend and Washington Week with The Atlantic. He also co-produced various segments for PBS News Weekend, including tensions in the South China Sea, gang violence in Haiti, and school lunch junk fees. Edic has also edited pieces submitted by incarcerated writers for Prison Journalism Project and wrote about policy issues at The American Prospect. Edic earned his master’s degree in journalism, focusing on business and economics reporting, at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Edic has won several awards from the Mississippi Press Association’s Better Newspaper Media Contest, including the Bill Minor Prize for General News Reporting for a piece assessing the community impact of record-high homicides in Leflore County in 2020. Edic is an avid runner and loves to cook.
Alex Cox
Alex Cox is a graduate from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. They worked at a variety of newsrooms in the Missouri News Network, with their primary newsroom being KBIA, the NPR affiliate for Mid-Missouri. In their many jobs, they've wore many hats, but their favorite type of reporting is working with audio and data. They believe in trying to take themselves out of the story as much as possible to let their sources tell the story.
Alexandra Markovich
Ally Markovich is an investigative reporter covering criminal justice at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Previously, she was an education and enterprise reporter at Berkeleyside, where her data-driven, accountability and narrative journalism earned multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California. At Berkeleyside, her investigation into a sexual misconduct case exposed how a school district knowingly kept a predatory teacher employed for over 15 years. Markovich’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and The Washington Post, and she has reported internationally from Ukraine. Before journalism, she taught high school English in high-poverty schools in Mississippi, New Jersey and California. She holds a B.A. in Politics from Princeton University and an M.A. in Journalism and Politics from Columbia University.
Amanda Pérez Pintado
Amanda Pérez Pintado covers health for the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI), a nonprofit investigative newsroom. Some of her recent work has focused on Puerto Rico’s prison health care system. Before joining the CPI, she reported on science and politics for El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest daily newspaper. She previously worked as a reporter for USA Today and as a Report for America corps member at Investigate Midwest, a nonprofit news site based in Champaign, Illinois. Pérez Pintado holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Puerto Rico’s Río Piedras campus and a master’s from New York University. She has taught journalism courses at her undergraduate alma mater and Sagrado Corazón University. Pérez Pintado is a native of Bayamón, Puerto Rico, and a lover of books and horror movies.
Jolan Kruse
Prior to joining Buffalo's Fire, Jolan Kruse interned with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and WISN Channel 12 News, where she covered Milwaukee schools, breaking news and the Republican National Convention. She most recently reported on Second Look Legislation and Juvenile Life Without Parole laws for the O'Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism. Jolan was part of the Marquette University class of 2025, graduating with honors in journalism and social welfare and justice. She also studied abroad in South Africa where she immersed herself in the local community as a volunteer teaching 4th-grade English while taking classes at the University of Western Cape.
Kori Skillman
Kori Skillman specializes in investigative journalism and visual storytelling. Before joining the Baltimore Beat, she worked on ABC News’ assignment desk, covering breaking news and editing live broadcasts. She also produced video and social media content at McClatchy Publishing. Her passion for social justice reporting—rooted in lived experience—grew during her investigative fellowship in Vermont, where she broke stories on police accountability, including a mishandled 911 call for VTDigger and unethical officer moonlighting for SevenDays. Kori also worked in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office under Alvin Bragg and in the San Diego County D.A.’s Office, covering trials and assisting with media communications. She has written for Black Voice News, focusing on COVID-19’s impact on Black Californians. A Bay Area native, Kori holds a dual B.A. in Journalism and International Business from San Diego State University, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa, and an M.S. from Columbia Journalism School. She aspires to cover global conflicts.
Owen Racer
Before joining Cascadia Daily News, Racer reported on intergenerational farming in Ecuador and El Salvador for The Guardian, documenting how consumerism, climate change and emigration collide on farms that future generations decide to inherit or leave. In Washington, D.C., he covered the IRS and Congress for Bloomberg. In New York City, he reported on maternal health disparities, riding the city’s subways with mobile mental illness teams to explain how the increasingly popular model of mental health care impacts the workforce.
From producing audio stories on mental health for NPR stations WHYY and WVXU in Cincinnati, Ohio, his hometown, to photographing youth impacted by gun violence in New Orleans, his reporting crosses topics and mediums. During the 2024 presidential election, he was the lone U.S. correspondent for The Kyiv Independent, Ukraine’s English-language media outlet, covering campaigns, foreign policy and Congress. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.