Sahan Journal

Sahan Journal is a one-month-old, digital-only news website whose mission is to provide fair, groundbreaking coverage that illuminates issues affecting Minnesota immigrants and refugees, and to chronicle how these communities are changing and redefining what it means to be a Minnesotan. We are expanding our audience by partnering with ethnic news media in the state and Minnesota Public Radio News, one of the largest newsrooms in Minnesota.

Eric Shelton

Eric Shelton is a photojournalist whose work has been published in the Boston Globe, LA Times, New York Times, USA Today, and Washington Post. He first left his home state of Mississippi to intern with the Associated Press in Boston. He worked across Texas and Mississippi as a photojournalist for Texarkana Gazette and the Natchez Democrat, a multimedia journalist for the Abilene Reporter-News, and digital reporter and chief photographer for the Hattiesburg American. He then worked as photo editor of the Killeen Daily Herald, managing photo and video for five publications. Eric has won awards from the Mississippi Associated Press Managing Editors and the Arkansas Press Photographers Association. He returned to Mississippi to become the first photojournalist at Mississippi Today. He continues with us for a second year.

Theresa Davis

Theresa worked as the editor of the Kemmerer Gazette in rural Wyoming for two years. Her work on the Bears Ears National Monument controversy in southern Utah earned awards from the National Newspaper Association, the Associated Press of Utah-Idaho-Spokane, the Utah Press Association and the Utah Society of Professional Journalists. Her coverage of the coal mining industry in southwest Wyoming earned awards from the Wyoming Press Association. As a student at Brigham Young University, she was the deputy editor at The Universe, the student-run publication. She grew up in the Texas Hill Country.

Keren Carrión

Keren Carrión reports for KERA in Dallas as well as The Texas Newsroom, a journalism collaboration among the public radio stations of Texas and NPR. A visual bilingual journalist, originally from Puerto Rico, she’ll bring her intelligence and camera to her work covering communities around Dallas. Carrión graduated from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. with a Bachelor’s in fine arts and spent four years gaining reporting experience in the nation’s Capital. Carrión recently worked with CNN as a video editor in Atlanta, Georgia, where she edited and produced videos for on-air and the network’s digital platforms. She has previously interned with CNN, the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, USA Today, Univision, and The Hill. Carrión is an alumnus of the 2019 New York Portfolio Review, the Eddie Adams Workshop XXXI, and the 2019 Momenta Photo Workshop Project Puerto Rico.

Brandon Block

Brandon Block reports for The Olympian in Olympia, Washington, focusing on homelessness in and around the state capital and the factors that contribute to homelessness, such as mental illness and drug addiction. Block is a reporter and filmmaker who, for two years, has covered criminal justice, immigration and the environment in Baltimore. His writing has appeared in WYPR 88.1, the DCist, and the Baltimore Beat, and he fact-checked the book “I Got a Monster: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Corrupt Police Squad.” He spent the last year in Bangkok, Thailand, where he worked for an education nonprofit on a Princeton in Asia fellowship. He holds a B.A. in Political Science and Film & Media Studies from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Block got his start in journalism by writing film and theater criticism for Baltimore City Paper.