WRITING

The Land

The Land was created in 2020 to report on Cleveland’s neighborhoods, economy and local government, delivering in-depth stories that foster accountability, inform the community, and inspire people to take action. This nonprofit started with a free website and a newsletter, and today it has built a diverse board, fostered community partnerships, welcomed thousands of subscribers, created an internship program and reporting fellowship for journalists of color, and published hundreds of stories.

Anya Szerzenie

Anya Sczerzenie is currently the education reporter for the HenricoCitizen, where she covers the school system with a focus on educationalequity. She previously did freelance work in Northern Virginia, covering awide range of topics from historical houses to the DC metro’s Silver Lineopening to the local schools. She is a graduate of Virginia CommonwealthUniversity where she was a contributing writer for the student newspaper,the Commonwealth Times, and held an internship with RVA Mag-- where shecovered local culture and LGBTQ topics.

Eric Standing

Eric Standing’s history with the Journal began in January 2022 when he began writing a humor column. His first experience with paid writing inspired him to want to pursue journalism as a full time career. The idea of taking pictures of people, places and events while telling their stories has appealed to him since he was a child. Standing is a dual citizen of Canada and America as well as Canadian born First Nations person with treaty rights. He occasionally covers stories in Saskatchewan for Eagle Feather News as well as working for the Journal. In May of 2022, Standing participated in the Indigenous Communications Arts (INCA) Summer Institute in Journalism. Through the First Nations University of Canada, Standing was able to train with professional journalists from CBC, CTV, APTN, Eagle Feather News and the Canadian Press. Standing considers himself an outdoorsman and his passions include hunting and fishing. His connections to his family and the land in North Dakota helped his decision to stay.

Loan-Anh Pham

Loan-Anh Pham is a bilingual education reporter at San José Spotlight, a nonprofit newsroom inthe heart of Silicon Valley. At Spotlight, Pham covers K-12 schools and aims to highlighteducational inequities in one of the nation’s most expensive areas. She previously reported onAsian American issues at AsAmNews and #IAmNotAVirus, and was a Spotlight intern coveringVietnamese communities. A recent UCLA graduate, Pham worked at the Daily Bruin, reportingon issues like immigration and gun violence. She obtained degrees in communication, publicaffairs and gender studies. Her fondest journalism memories include working as editor-in-chiefof her high school newspaper, The Union. She loves Vietnamese coffee, overfilled bookshelvesand puns.

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell

Atiya Irvin-Mitchell is a Pittsburgh native who graduated from Chatham University in 2017 after studyingCommunications and Political Science with a focus in journalism. Over the years she has written forThe Student Guide to Pittsburgh, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The New Pittsburgh Courier,PublicSource, Vice, The PLS Reporter, PINJ News, and BlackPittsburgh.com. Irvin-Mitchell is excited tolearn more about the tech industry in Pittsburgh and do her part to make information on rapidlychanging trends accessible to the general public.

Prince James Story

Prince James Story covers criminal and social justice for Black Voice News, an online news publication in Riverside, California. Before joining Black Voice News, Story was one of the 2021 Carnegie-Knight NEWS21 Fellows working on the multimedia reporting project “Unmasking America: The Lingering Toll of COVID-19.” Story also served as a digital reporter for the United States Olympic and Paralympic committee for their “Olympians Made Here” campaign. While earning his master’s degree from Arizona State University, he was a graduate assistant for the Global Sport Institute and covered Arizona State football. He also wrote articles on issues involving social inequalities in underserved areas and communities of color while spotlighting efforts by individuals and organizations to address these communal issues. In December 2021, Story earned his master’s degree in Sports Journalism from Arizona State University-Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and received the Outstanding Graduate Student award for the Fall Convocation. He earned a B.A. in Mass Communication and a B.A. in African American studies from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Mehr Sher

Mehr Sher is working as a statewide environmental reporter for Bangor Daily News in Maine.Sher has always been passionate about telling underreported stories from undercoveredregions. Prior to joining BDN, Sher graduated from Columbia Journalism School with honors forher master’s degree in investigative journalism. During the program, she reported extensivelyon the Afghan refugee resettlement program and investigated the effectiveness of hate crimelegislation in Indiana. Sher began her journalism career abroad in Pakistan,where she was based for over six years. During her career there, she investigated systemicfailure, an inadequate health care system, and a cover up, which led to the exacerbation of anHIV/AIDs outbreak in over a thousand children in Larkana, Sindh. In 2015, she graduated fromNorth Carolina State University with a bachelor’s in international relations. Sher speaks manylanguages – including Pashto, Urdu, intermediate French, basic Korean, and is currentlyindependently learning Farsi. She is originally from Raleigh, North Carolina and is an ethnicPashtun from northwestern Pakistan. Sher appreciates great coffee, music, films, poetry,outdoor activities, and traveling.

Emily Kenny

Emily Kenny is photojournalist for Spectrum News in Syracuse, New York covering agriculture and food production. In 2021, she graduated with her master’s degree in photojournalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and, before that, she graduated from Buena Vista University as a dual major in digital media and psychology. The agriculture beat made sense for Emily as she grew up on her family farm in Schaller, Iowa. She has worked on multiple long-term stories: her master’s project about women and their insecurities, and the other focusing on her family’s farm. Emily resides in Syracuse, New York with her two dogs, Chanel and Athena.

Patricia Ortiz

Patricia Ortiz is the bilingual reporter at Enlace Latino NC, covering state and midterm elections, municipal and sheriff elections, and immigration issues affecting the community, including workers at meat processing plants, farms and construction sites. Ortiz is a Colombian-American journalist, with more than 16 years of experience as a reporter in Spanish-language written media in North Carolina. She emigrated to the United States in 1999 seeking a better life and professional opportunity, which came in 2004 when she began working as a local reporter for Mi Gente newspaper in Charlotte. Under the supervision of the general editor Rafael Prieto, Ortiz won her first journalistic awards for articles on immigration, politics, and police investigations. During her professional career in North Carolina, Ortiz has had the opportunity to work as a correspondent for AOL Latino – Nuestra Voces, Qué Pasa-Charlotte Newspaper, and La Noticia, and most recently was part of the team at Enlace Latino NC. As a reporter who has written local and state news, features, and stories, Ortiz has had the opportunity to be very close to the Hispanic and immigrant community in North Carolina, and to experience the changes and achievements over the years, as well as the constant challenges in a southern state.

Joshua Yeager

Joshua Yeager covers environmental and health issues in Bakersfield and Kern County, California. He previously worked for the Visalia Times Delta, where his reporting exposed inequalities in Tulare County towns suffering contaminated and insufficient drinking water. He won a first-place California News Papers Association award for his coverage of Sierra Nevada’s historic 2020 wildfire season. An avid Sierra hiker, he has recently investigated forest management policy oversights that have resulted in the death of thousands of giant sequoia trees.