MULTIMEDIA

The Associated Press

The Associated Press is a global news agency that began 172 years ago as a cooperative of five New York City newspapers. With 263 locations in more than 100 countries, AP provides journalism to roughly 15,000 media outlets around the world. AP sets standards for ethics and excellence, and 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. AP’s seven news bureaus in the northeast U.S. provide vital local and regional news to 378 newsrooms.

Joseph De La Cruz

Joseph De La Cruz reports for The Riverdale Press, covering housing in New York City's Riverdale neighborhood in the Bronx. De La Cruz was born and raised in Brooklyn, and still calls it home. This multimedia journalist has written for online news outlets, including Bklyner, Kings County Politics and NBC News, primarily covering politics and culture. For over two years he was an associate video producer for MSNBC's “Morning Joe” and before that, he worked at the cable channel's “Live Weekends,” “Politics Nation” and “Kasie DC” as an associate video producer. De La Cruz holds a bachelor's degree from Brooklyn College, where he double majored in journalism and TV and radio. Husband and father, De La Cruz enjoys shooting video around Brooklyn when he gets a chance.

Kayla Canne

Kayla Canne reports on poverty and the low-income housing shortage for the Asbury Park Press in Neptune, New Jersey. As a freelancer, Canne wrote for her hometown daily newspaper, the Democrat & Chronicle in Rochester, New York, and for The Sun Chronicle, a publication in Attleboro, Massachusetts. She is a proud CODA (child of deaf adults) and was a deaf education volunteer with the Peace Corps in Ghana for nearly two years until the pandemic forced her evacuation in March 2020. Prior to that, she was the lead enterprise reporter and assignment editor at The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, where she cultivated a passion for narrative, human-first storytelling, and helped editors launch a new weekend edition as they shifted to a six-day paper. Canne's work earned her two awards from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. She is a journalism graduate of Boston University's College of Communication.

Laura Onyeneho

Laura Onyeneho reports for the Houston Defender Network, covering the city's education system as it relates to African American children. Onyeneho is a multimedia journalist and has reported on social, cultural, lifestyle and community news. As an independent journalist, her coverage of issues that impact Black communities has been published online at The Crisis, Radiant Health, 21Ninety, Her Agenda and Afroelle Magazine. In 2019, she was a multimedia producer for the Boston Herald, and has worked as a news associate at Boston's WBZ-TV, a CBS station. Onyeneho earned her master's degree in broadcast journalism at Emerson College, and her bachelor's at Curry College. She's from Lowell, Massachusetts.

Natalie Hockaday

Natalie C. Hockaday covers Food Insecurity and Health for The Washington Informer in Washington D.C. She is a first-year corps member with Report for American and a recent graduate of Old Dominion University. In college she worked for her student news organization, the Mace & Crown, and was Editor-in-Chief her senior year. During her role as Editor-in-Chief, Natalie and her staff published the university’s first Black History Month issue highlighting the stories and contributions of those within the campus community. During her time in college Natalie was a public relations and marketing intern and a multi-media intern for two companies in Washington D.C. Natalie always had interest in sharing stories since a young age when she learned photography from her father and later learned videography and editing. Natalie has a passion for storytelling and sharing the multiple experiences within the community.

Sam Wilson

Samuel Wilson is a visual journalist covering rural Montana for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He has worked most recently as a freelance photographer based in Portland, Oregon, his hometown, and previously in southeast Alaska, while also independently producing short and full-length documentaries. Wilson interned at several community newspapers around the country after graduating from the University of Montana, where he was the multimedia editor for the student publication, the Montana Kaimin, and took first place in the Hearst National Multimedia Championship. Wilson considers the mountains of the Pacific Northwest to be home.

Victoria Rossi

Victoria Rossi covers the status of women in El Paso, Texas for El Paso Matters, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Previously, she worked as a research fellow for a UCLA School of Law data project, where she investigated state prisons thought to be undercounting COVID-19 deaths. Rossi spent the summer of 2019 in El Paso documenting conditions among asylum seekers returned to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico under the U.S. government’s Migrant Protection Protocols. Originally from Houston, Rossi has covered education and health at the Napa Valley Register, earning her two awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, and has reported in Latin America and South Asia. She holds a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a master’s in public policy from The University of Texas at Austin.

Genesis Chavez-Caro

Genesis Chavez-Caro covers poverty and opportunity in the Inland Empire, an area encompassing Riverside and San Bernardino counties east of Los Angeles, for the California Divide project. She is a former editor and columnist for Spanish-language publication El Aviso Magazine, where she focused on topics regarding Latino millennial trends and interests. Previously, she was a reporter for the nonprofit organization Gladeo, where her reporting provided low-income high school students the resources they need to make informed career choices. Chavez-Caro was also a reporter for bilingual newspaper El Tecolote, covering San Francisco’s historic Mission District and its ever-changing cultural climate. She has a bachelor’s degree in Journalism with a minor in Race and Resistance Studies from San Francisco State University. Her hometown is Huntington Park, California.

Jenny Whidden

Jenny Whidden reports on the New Hampshire Statehouse and racial justice legislation for The Granite State News Collaborative, a statewide multimedia collective of nearly 20 media outlets and community partners working together. Previously, Whidden, of Rolling Meadows, Illinois, covered the Illinois Statehouse and the pandemic for the Chicago Tribune. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Marquette University, where she was managing editor of the Marquette Tribune, the award-winning student paper. Whidden has reported for New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, a nonprofit site. The Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report have also published her work. Whidden says that when she was a senior in college a journalist told her, “When done well, journalism is a genuine public service.” This is what Whidden intends on doing.            

Jesse Vad

Jesse Vad covers eastern Santa Cruz County for Nogales International, a local publication in southern Arizona. Previously, Vad worked as a reporting intern for SJV Water, a nonprofit online publication focused on water coverage in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where he covered all things water including agriculture, climate change and policy. Vad is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism’s class of 2020 where he specialized in visual journalism. He and his peers were finalists in the EPPY Awards for their pandemic coverage in the South Bronx. Vad has also worked as a remote reporting intern for The Jakarta Post where he covered Covid-19’s impact abroad. He was awarded the 2020 Correspondents Fund Scholar title from the J-School for his work with The Jakarta Post. As a freelancer, Vad’s work has appeared in NBC News, Gothamist, The Times-Standard and more. Before coming to journalism, Vad was an elementary school teacher. Over summer breaks, he worked on his own storytelling projects in New Orleans, Tajikistan and China.