RADIO / PODCAST

Maria Mendez

María Méndez reports for Texas Public Radio from the border city of Laredo where she covers business issues from an area that is now the nation’s top trade hub. She knows Texas well. Mendez has reported on the state’s diverse communities and tumultuous politics through internships at the Austin American-Statesman, The Texas Tribune and The Dallas Morning News. She also participated in NPR’s Next Generation Radio program while studying at the University of Texas at Austin. At UT, she wrote for The Daily Texan and helped launch diversity initiatives, including two collaborative series on undocumented and first-generation college students. One of her stories for these series won an award from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She has spent the last year reporting for The Dallas Morning News as a summer breaking news intern and then as a fellow in the paper’s capital bureau in Austin. She is a native of Guanajuato in Central Mexico.

Dominic Anthony Walsh

Dominic Anthony Walsh reports for Texas Public Radio focusing on the Hill Country region. Walsh knows Texas well. Before his senior year, he reported for TPR, and continued as a stringer in the fall and an intern again in the spring. He covered local arts and culture in San Antonio, a mass casualty shooting, voting rights, and the coronavirus pandemic, plus broke the news of a billion-dollar federal lawsuit brought by a group of farmers against one of the largest logistics companies in the world. He contributed to the statewide Texas Standard and to the NPR national newscast. Dominic got his start in broadcasting and journalism at Trinity University, where he worked at KRTU 91.7 FM and the independent campus newspaper, the Trinitonian. He is from Schertz, a suburb of San Antonio. He is also a percussionist, and spent six years in the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio. He remains active in the local music community.

Maria Esquinca

María Esquinca is a reporter for Radio Bilingüe in Fresno, Calif, where she focuses on environmental issues in the San Joaquin Valley. A fronteriza, comfortable on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and mostly grew up across the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas. She is an M.F.A candidate at the University of Miami. She has focused her reporting on issues that affect communities of color like immigration, gentrification, and discrimination. She interned at WLRN, the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, and was a Dow Jones News Fund Business Reporting intern at Crain’s Detroit Business. As a News 21 Ethics and Excellence Fellow, she reported on lack of access to clean, drinking water in colonias along the U.S.-Mexico border. The story was re-published in outlets like The Texas Tribune and the Center for Public Integrity. During her undergraduate education, she was a reporter and editor at The Prospector, the student-run newspaper at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her stories earned her awards from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association and the College Media Association. Her poetry has been published in Waxwing, The Florida Review, and Glass: A Journal of Poetry.

Lexi Peery

Lexi Peery is a reporter for KUER/NPR Utah where she focuses on issues about fast-growing Washington County. Peery is a Salt Lake City native who has been in Southern Utah the past year reporting on all things related to the environment, development and government for The Spectrum & Daily News. She returned to Utah after graduating from Boston University, majoring in journalism and concentrating in environmental studies while earning the Blue Chip Award. During her senior year she was an environmental and newsroom fellow at WBUR, Boston’s NPR station. That same year she also interned for the national call-in show, “On Point.” While at BU, she worked her way up to editor-in-chief of the independent student newspaper, The Daily Free Press. She also was a correspondent at The Boston Globe and did freelance reporting for City Journals in the Salt Lake Valley.

Lucia Starbuck

Lucia Starbuck reports for KUNR Public Radio, where she focuses on community reporting and the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in Reno, Nevada. Starbuck knows the area well. She is from Reno and graduated from the University of Nevada, Reno with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, along with a minor in cinema and media studies. Local community issues are her passion, including the affordable housing crisis, access to oral healthcare and the challenges voters with disabilities face while participating in the election process. Along with radio, Starbuck reports in various formats, including digital storytelling and live reporting on social media. She has also directed and filmed two documentaries about homelessness. Starbuck contributed to KUNR’s coverage of hateful expressions at the University of Nevada, Reno, produced in 2019, which won a regional Edward R. Murrow award in the Best Continuing Coverage category and first place in the Associated Press Television and Radio Association (APTRA) broadcast contest for Continuing Coverage. Starbuck co-created and contributed to the series Spurs & Mud: A Century of Rodeo, which won first place from APTRA in 2019 for Best Sports Coverage.

Riane Roldan

Roldan reports for KUT in Austin, Texas and concentrates on the costs and benefits of suburban growth in Hays County. Roldan covered politics, immigration, and the environment during internships at The Texas Tribune and the Austin American-Statesman. She graduates from Emerson College in May with a bachelor's degree in journalism and grew up in Miami, Florida, where she attended Miami Dade College. Roldan has covered criminal justice for The Medill Justice Project and attended The New York Times Student Journalism Institute. Born to Cuban and Chilean families, she speaks Spanish and is a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Roldan is also an alumnus of the Chips Quinn Scholars Program for Diversity in Journalism and won the first place award for in-depth reporting from the Florida College Press Association Miami.

Allyson Ortegon

Allyson Ortegon is working for KUT in Austin, Texas where she covers growth and development in nearby Hays County. Before that, she covered politics and policy, including the 86th Texas Legislature, during fellowships with The Texas Tribune and with Texas NPR affiliate stations. She wrote for The Alcalde, the award-winning alumni magazine published by The University of Texas at Austin since 1913. In an earlier stint at KUT, Austin’s NPR Station, she participated in  NPR's Next Generation Radio project. At UT, she reported across radio, television and print media for student publications including The Daily Texan and Texas Student Television. She will graduate with a degree in journalism and a secondary concentration in business. She is a two-time recipient of awards from The Headliner’s Foundation of Texas and she received the Jo Caldwell Meyer Scholarship from the Women Communicators of Austin, the Bob Schenkkan Endowed Presidential Scholarship, and the Carmage and Martha Ann Walls Foundation Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Journalism.

Erin McKinstry

Erin McKinstry reports for KCAW in Sitka, Alaska, a city and borough near Juneau with a population under 10,000. McKinstry brings experience to the KCAW post, where she concentrates on Sitka issues. She is an Alaska-based journalist and audio producer who has reported stories for Alaska Public Media, Edible Alaska, The Trace, The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, KBIA and Harvest Public Media. She’s a former host and producer for the Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Radio Podcast and produces her own podcast called “Out Here” about life in rural Alaska. McKinstry has a master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. She’s a fellow of Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE), a Fulbright Scholar and an Edward R. Murrow Award Recipient from the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA).

Brenda León

Brenda Millicent León reports on undercovered Latino communities for Connecticut Public Radio. She covered the recovery efforts following Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico during her internship at The Center for Investigative Journalism in Puerto Rico. A graduate from Lehman College at the City University of New York, she focused on broadcast journalism with a concentration in political science. During her time there she was a host at WWRL La Invasora 1600 AM. Her work has been published in The Gothamist, Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), El Deadline and The Mott Haven Herald. A Bronx native, León is a recent graduate from The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she obtained her master’s in Spanish-language journalism.  

Ali Oshinskie

Ali Oshinskie reports for Connecticut Public, the Constitution State’s only statewide public media resource and home to Connecticut Public Television and Connecticut Public Radio. Her focus is on the Naugatuck River Valley and the issues that affect blue-collar workers there. The Report for America assignment is terra firma for Oshinskie, who grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. She has produced live radio shows at every hour of the morning between 2 a.m.and 10 a.m. during internships and fellowships for New Hampshire Public Radio, Marketplace Morning Report and Connecticut Public Radio. She has written for The Hartford Courant and Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s The Arts Paper, and she has produced for Wondery’s Business Wars Daily and the New England News Collaborative’s weekly program “NEXT.” Later this year, her writing will be published in “Fast Funny Women,” an anthology of essays. After completing her undergrad at the University of Connecticut, Oshinskie founded a podcasting company, PODSTORIES. Most recently she was a program coordinator for the Yale School of Nursing.