WRITING

Rachel Crumpler

Rachel Crumpler reports on gender and prison health and health inequities for North Carolina Health News, a nonprofit news service that covers health care in the state. She is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, where she majored in journalism and minored in history and social and economic justice. As an intern for The Triangle Business Journal, she wrote daily stories about the economy and businesses in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Crumpler also wrote more than 50 stories on events and developments impacting the campus community for her college newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel. She was named a 2020-21 Hearst investigative reporting award winner for her data-driven story spotlighting funding cuts at local health departments across North Carolina and the impact it had on Covid responses. Crumpler’s work has appeared in The News and Observer, WRAL, Greensboro News & Record, NC Policy Watch and other publications. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys crossing items off her bucket list, such as going skydiving to celebrate her college graduation.

Leo Bertucci

Leo Bertucci covers energy and environment for the Victoria Advocate in Victoria, Texas. Prior to joining the Advocate, Bertucci served as a newsletter editor and news reporter for Western Kentucky University’s student newspaper, the College Heights Herald. Bertucci also wrote feature stories and previewed local events as a summer intern for the Daily News in Bowling Green, Kentucky. When he is not writing stories, Bertucci enjoys visiting baseball stadiums and eating hot peppers.

Brittany Brown

Brittany Brown covers workers and labor in Memphis, Tennessee for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, which reports on policy, poverty and power in Memphis and Shelby County. Prior to joining MLK50, Brown reported on the criminal justice system in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana for the Gulf States Newsroom, NPR’s southern news hub. She was the inaugural Emerging Reporters Fellow at Mississippi Today, where she covered the state’s criminal legal system through the lens of justice and equity. Brown’s journalism career began in student media at the University of Mississippi, where she worked as a reporter and editor for the student newspaper, tv station and yearbook. In college she worked as a breaking news intern with The Baltimore Sun and was a reporting fellow with Carnegie-Knight News21 at Arizona State University, where she reported on hate crimes in America. Brown holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and is currently completing her master’s documentary thesis project in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.

Grant McLaughlin

Grant McLaughlin is an economic development/ workforce reporter for the Commercial Dispatch in Columbus, Mississippi. As an undergraduate at The University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism and New Media l, McLaughlin worked for The Daily Mississippian, Rebel Radio, and started his own literary arts/ news website and magazine, The Underground Poet. He also participated in the Journalism School’s in-depth reporting class, writing about Fannie Lou Hamer and her Freedom Farm Cooperative. McLaughlin has also been a photography intern for Invitation magazine, where he worked local events in Oxford, Mississippi. He has a passion for writing poetry and creative nonfiction and has been published in Quasar Arts Magazine and the Landshark Review.

Grant Ritchey

Grant Ritchey covers education and the growing workforce for Knox Pages, a digital news organization serving residents of Knox County, in central Ohio. Prior to joining Knox Pages, Ritchey was a general assignment reporter for the Ashland Times-Gazette based in Ashland, Ohio, for which he reported and wrote features on sex trafficking, catalytic converter thefts, county and local government, crime, courts, new businesses, and on important and overlooked members of the community. While enrolled at Ohio University, Ritchey worked at the student-run news publication, The Post. There, he gained experience in meeting coverage, breaking news, investigative reporting, and feature writing. Ritchey interned at The Borgen Project, a nonprofit that addresses global poverty, where he wrote reports on internet access, clean drinking water and the steps being taken toward solving those issues.

Jeffrey Ruiz

Jeffrey Ruiz covers disinvested neighborhoods in search of solutions for the city's systemic inequalities in Dallas, Texas for Dallas Free Press. While an undergraduate at the University of North Texas, Ruiz was a special contributor for The Dallas Morning News and reported on a city redevelopment project in McKinney, Texas that cleared an entire mobile home community. His bilingual skills in Spanish played a major role in this investigative piece. Ruiz enrolled in a practicum with The North Texas Daily as a news reporter covering social issues at the local and county level, based on initiatives and programs declared by the city council and the administration of UNT. He holds a bachelor's degree in journalism with a concentration in digital and print media. Whenever he isn’t reporting, Ruiz spends his time serving the community through his local church.

Kierra Sam

Kierra Sam is a political reporter for the Houston Defender Network, covering issues of environmental racism, criminal justice, voter suppression and more. A Texas native with a passion for storytelling and keeping communities informed about the world around them, Kierra attended the University of Houston and received her bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism and a minor in Spanish. While at the university, she worked on several video projects with different departments and also interned at KPRC Channel 2 News in Houston. Kierra started her professional journalism career as a digital MSJ at an NBC/ABC news affiliate television station in Beaumont, Texas. She has reported on stories covering hurricanes, plant explosions, criminal investigations, as well as profile pieces. Outside of news, Kierra likes to go to music festivals, take road trips and explore new places with family and friends.

Simone Garza

Simone Garza is covering economic mobility in the African-American community in Wichita, Kansas for The Community Voice. Garza’s reporting career had its start at the University of Iowa in 2019, when she enrolled in the school’s mass communication and journalism programs. There, she reported on research projects for The Daily Iowan, held two internships for digital marketing, with a woman-owned business and blogging for environmental research. Garza holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in philosophy.

Jacob Martin

Jacob Martin covers the criminal justice system and African-American communities in Kansas City, Missouri for The Community Voice, a statewide bi-weekly that reports on Black and African-American news in Kansas and Missouri. Prior to joining The Community Voice, Martin worked as a general assignments reporter with KCUR, where he covered breaking news in Kansas City, and the Shawnee Mission Post, covering COVID-19 trends in the community. Before moving to Kansas City he lived in Brooklyn, New York (by way of Louisville, Kentucky). He holds a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Louisville, where he wrote for The Louisville Cardinal, the student newspaper.

100 Days in Appalachia

A digital news publication, 100 Days in Appalachia has a mission to share the diverse stories of the 13 states that make up this region. Working with local voices to apply a cultural lens to what’s happening here, it shares what that means for the rest of the world.