WRITING

Maria Benevento

Maria Benevento covers education for The Kansas City Beacon, a nonprofit newsroom focused on in-depth public service journalism. Prior to joining The Beacon, she reported on the Missouri state government as an intern for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Jefferson City bureau. While earning her master's at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Benevento worked on the education and state government beats, the graphics desk, and as a teaching assistant on the copy desk for the Columbia Missourian, the school's community paper. Benevento's investigative work for the paper focused on the struggles domestic violence victims face while trying to divorce their abusers. She spent two years as an editorial intern at the National Catholic Reporter in Kansas City before heading off to graduate school. Home for Benevento is Kirksville, Missouri.

Rebecca Najera

Rebecca Najera covers race and equity for Oklahoma Watch, a nonprofit investigative news organization based in Oklahoma City. Najera graduated with a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Texas in 2021, where she was a Mayborn Scholar and editor-in-chief of the North Texas Daily, the student paper. As an undergraduate at UNT, she reported and edited for the Daily, and prior to that she earned her associate degree at Tyler Junior College, where she was editor-in-chief of The DrumBeat, the student publication. Najera’s writing and photography have earned her awards from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association. Home for Najera is New London, Texas.

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.            

Amanda Pérez Pintado

Amanda Pérez Pintado covers Illinois' agriculture businesses and workers for The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news site based in Champaign, Illinois. She previously reported on trending topics and local events in South Florida as an intern at the Spanish-language news outlet El Nuevo Herald. She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Puerto Rico's Río Piedras campus and a master's from New York University. While there, this multimedia reporter covered immigrant voters in the New Hampshire 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, the pandemic and Puerto Rico for Pavement Pieces, an NYU news site. Pérez Pintado was editor-in-chief of the student-run publication Latin America News Dispatch, which covers Latin America, the Caribbean and Latinos in the U.S., and in her native Puerto Rico she has reported for El Nuevo Día, the island's main paper.

Cheyanne Daniels

Cheyanne M. Daniels reports for the Chicago Sun-Times, covering the city's South and West Side neighborhoods. She hails from the south suburbs of Chicago, and earned her master's degree from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 2021, specializing in politics, policy and foreign affairs reporting. As a grad student, Daniels reported on politics and policies affecting disenfranchised and minority communities, such as Illinois inmates' and their response to the pandemic and vaccines. Daniels' work has been published in the Wisconsin State Journal, the Grio, South Side Weekly, and by UPI. Previously, she was a research scholar for the Journalism, Ethics and Democracy Institute at Notre Dame. Daniels holds a bachelor's in journalism from Illinois' North Central College, where she served as news editor of The Chronicle and NCClinked, its online news site.

Jasmine Demers

Jasmine Demers reports on issues related to youth, social services and legislative accountability for the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit newsroom based in Louisville. Previously, she worked for the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, her hometown, covering science, health, government and the pandemic. Following months of local coronavirus coverage, including deaths in Arizona nursing homes, Demers received top awards from the Arizona Newspapers Association. The Arizona Press Club has honored her science reporting. She holds a master's degree from The University of Arizona School of Journalism, where she was editor-in-chief of the student-run Daily Wildcat, and received the Philip Mangelsdorf Award for Outstanding Newsperson of the Year as well as the Douglas D. Martin Award for Courage and Integrity.

Marie Fazio

Marie Fazio reports on St. Tammany Parish for The Times-Picayune and The Advocate, a news organization based in New Orleans. Previously, she was a reporting fellow at The New York Times, covering breaking news and general assignment reporting. Fazio has written crime and feature stories and breaking news for the Chicago Tribune, and her series highlighting disability issues in Illinois earned her an award from the Chicago Headline Club for best investigative/public service reporting. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Fazio worked at the student paper, The Observer, and has also reported at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and The Florida Times-Union, in her hometown of Jacksonville. She is an avid runner and enjoys the simpler things in life, like sunrises, hot coffee and paper maps.

Robert Finn

Robert James Finn covers Louisiana's Florida Parishes for The Advocate in Baton Rouge. As an intern for VTDigger, a nonprofit website covering daily news in Vermont, he reported on COVID-19's effects on the state economy and legislature. Finn has covered healthcare inequity in Mississippi for a series partnership between the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and the Pulitzer Center, and his work has appeared in the Clarion-Ledger, the Hattiesburg American, MLK50, and Indian Country Today. As a student at Middlebury College, he worked in Guatemala on an initiative to revitalize Mayan languages spoken in the country's highlands, played basketball, and was managing editor of the student newspaper, The Middlebury Campus, where he helped direct the publication's transition to digital platforms as students were sent home in the first weeks of the pandemic. Finn graduated in February 2021 with a degree in history and Spanish. He's from Mill Valley, California.

Brandon Drenon

Brandon Drenon is a Social Justice and Equity reporter at the IndyStar in Indianapolis, Indiana, covering the black and brown communities of the greater metro Indy area. Prior to Brandon’s arrival in Indiana, he was a video producer for BBC Reel, a digitally native platform of the British Broadcasting Corporation, where he reported on health and wellness topics as well as Black culture. Brandon also worked as a production assistant on the documentary Whose Vote Counts, a PBS Frontline production, which was recently nominated for a Peabody Award. In 2020, Brandon received his master’s in journalism from Columbia University to build upon his writing career as a freelance contributor for the Huffington Post and New York Post.

Andrew Howard

Andrew Howard covers the statehouse for The Maine Monitor in Augusta. He is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he reported on state government as an intern at The Arizona Republic and the Arizona Capitol Times. Howard also served as editor-in-chief of The State Press, the student-run newspaper at ASU. He is the recipient of the Associated Collegiate Press 2019 Story of the Year Award for breaking news and the Arizona Press Club's student-news award for his scoop that Kurt Volker, then U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, had resigned from the Trump State Department. For his honors thesis, Howard studied journalism's role in America's polarization and how a nonprofit business model may decrease media polarization. He grew up in Phoenix.