WRITING

Laurence Du Sault

Laurence Du Sault covers childhood poverty in San Jose and the Bay Area as part of “The California Divide” project. Before coming to the Mercury News she covered the coronavirus pandemic as a stringer for the New York Times and as a researcher for the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, she investigated police criminality for the IRP as part of a statewide coalition of news organizations examining California law enforcement. Du Sault is a recipient of the Society of Professional Journalist’s James Madison Student Journalist Freedom of Information Award, a fellow for the National Institute for Climate Education, as well as a recipient of the Randy Shilts Award for Exceptional Reporting. At Berkeley, she wrote magazine features on the environment and Indigenous affairs, reporting from Native American communities in the Golden State. After completing an internship at CIBL 101,5, public radio in Montreal, Du Sault lived and freelanced in Mexico for a year, where she perfected her Spanish and taught children in Mérida. She grew up in a strictly French-speaking home in Canada and moved to Australia at 18 to learn English. She is a graduate of McGill University in Montreal. 

Maria Sestito

Maria Sestito reports for The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California, where she focuses on issues facing the areas exploding senior citizen population. Before earning her master’s degree at the University of California-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism in May 2020, Sestito was the public safety reporter at the Napa Valley Register. While there, she covered murder trials and the North Bay Wildfires. She also started her own lifestyle column called “Jersey Girl.” Before moving to California, Sestito worked at The Daily News in Jacksonville, N.C. as a photographer and general assignment reporter. She is originally from New Jersey and received a B.A. in Middle Eastern Studies from Rutgers University in 2012. Sestito has won several California News Publishers Association awards for Best Writing, Best Column, and Breaking News. She is a recipient of the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for the study of Arabic and a Bloomberg-UNC-Berkeley Business Journalism Diversity Fellow. At Berkeley, she won the Dean’s Merit Fellowship.  

Elizabeth Moomey

Liz Moomey reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky where she focuses on watchdog reporting in eastern Kentucky, specifically Pike County. She was a reporter for the Salisbury Post in North Carolina where she covered the city and politics, along with the town of Landis. Her reporting sparked an embezzlement investigation into two town employees. She previously worked at the North State Journal as a reporter and page designer. Moomey has been awarded by the North Carolina Press Association for feature writing, news enterprise reporting and design. She was also a sports clerk and writer for the News & Observer and a web producer for Spectrum News, both in Raleigh, North Carolina. Liz was the editor of North Carolina State University’s yearbook Agromeck, which won the Columbia Scholastic Press Association’s Gold Crown award. She is a graduate of North Carolina State University and serves on the annual publications advisory board helping to select the incoming editor of the yearbook and literary magazine.

Adam Wagner

Adam has worked for six years at The Wilmington StarNews in North Carolina covering local government, public safety, criminal justice and the environment. Since late 2016, his reporting has focused on water contamination in eastern North Carolina, while he has also covered Hurricanes Florence and Matthew and their aftermaths. He’s won awards for investigative and enterprise reporting from the North Carolina Press Association, the D.C. Press Association and the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania. Adam is a graduate of Ohio University, where he was managing editor of the school paper. Watchdog reporting on Hurricane Florence recovery in Raleigh, North Carolina The News & Observer is dedicated to covering the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which destroyed lives, homes and businesses around North Carolina.  Adam is assigned to the newsroom’s ongoing efforts to cover cleanup, rebuilding and revitalizing communities following Hurricane Florence — a process that will take years. His primary focus is  investigating and reporting on how last year’s disaster disproportionately affects low-income residents and people of color in North Carolina. He works closely with our data journalist and three other reporters who are covering the flood’s aftermath. Adam reports directly to one of the newsroom’s most experienced and highly regarded editors, with assistance from the managing editor.

Mary Norkol

Mary Norkol reports for The Sun News, the newspaper based in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where she focuses on homelessness. This is an underreported topic in the resort area with unique aspects including family members who follow their retiree relatives to the region but don’t have enough money for housing. Norkol wrote features for “The FBI Files” and “Murals and Mosaics” projects while working as an intern at the Chicago Sun-Times and worked on the investigative team during an internship with CBS in Chicago. She was editor-in-chief of Loyola University Chicago’s independent student newspaper, which won first place in its general excellence category by the Illinois College Press Association. Norkol was recognized for her work on a podcast covering the Mercy Hospital shooting and multimedia reporting on sexual assault solve rates in Chicago. A true Midwesterner, Norkol grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota, and spends her vacations and holidays in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Megan Taros

Megan Taros reports for The Arizona Republic where she concentrates on the Latino and African-American communities in South Phoenix. Most recently, Taros covered Latino affairs across an eight-county swath in Twin Falls, Idaho, where she launched the beat at the local paper. There she was a part of numerous community engagement efforts that included getting Latino students interested in media, listening sessions and launching a series on representation in education, politics, business and health. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where she covered health disparities, income inequality and immigration in the Latino communities of Corona and Elmhurst, Queens, New York. She’s covered education and local government in southern New Jersey, San Francisco and her native Los Angeles.

Stephanie Garcia

Stephanie García reports for The Baltimore Sun focusing on Latinos, the fastest-growing ethnic group in the Maryland city. She is a former news assistant for PBS NewsHour and a foreign desk intern for The Independent. Garcia spent two years teaching English in Madrid. As an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer in Arizona, she was an Adult Education Coordinator assisting refugees in Phoenix. Originally from Queens, New York, Garcia graduated magna cum laude from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

Daniel Jin

Danny Jin writes for the Berkshire Eagle, where he covers the Massachusetts Legislature and government for readers in the western part of the state. This coverage has, until now, been sorely lacking: Berkshire County is in Massachusetts but doesn’t get local television news from Boston. Instead, the county gets TV news channels from Albany, New York, that don’t cover the Berkshires. Jin knows the area well. He was an intern for the Eagle and The Christian Science Monitor in Boston. And he went to college in western Massachusetts where he was editor-in-chief of The Williams Record, Williams College’s independent student newspaper. At the Record, he reported on low morale and pay disparities among college staff. During his first stint at the Eagle in 2018, he wrote local arts and feature stories. As a freelancer, he has also contributed to the Columbia Journalism Review. At Williams, he majored in American studies and rode for the cycling team. His parents emigrated from China following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

Ceili Doyle

Ceili Doyle reports for The Columbus Dispatch, focusing on rural issues. The Dispatch’s readership area includes a large swath of Appalachia and Doyle covers it all, from health care to mining to transportation. She covered crime and public health — writing about police-community relations, mental health and health care policies — and contributed to breaking news and enterprise coverage of the Dayton, Ohio mass shooting during an internship with The Dispatch. She served as managing editor of Miami University of Ohio’s award-winning, independent student-run weekly, The Miami Student. In college, Doyle’s focus as a reporter was on crime, sexual assault and alcohol abuse. She also established and supervised The Student’s branch of audio journalism. Her work at Miami garnered her multiple first-place Mark of Excellence awards, presented by the Society of Professional Journalists. She graduated from Miami in May 2020 with B.A. in journalism and political science. Doyle is from Willow Springs, Illinois.

Jazzlyn Johnson

Jazzlyn Johnson reports for The Community Voice, a publication that focuses on African-American communities. While The Voice began in Wichita, Kansas, it has expanded to include Kansas City, Missouri, where Johnson focuses on violent crime, affordable housing and other issues of concern. Before this, she was an editorial intern for the Outdoor Writers Association of America’s membership magazine Outdoors Unlimited. She has also worked with Garden City Harvest, a local nonprofit in Missoula, Montana, as a public outreach intern. While earning her B.A. at the University of Montana School of Journalism, Johnson covered Montana’s legislation surrounding the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s crisis. Johnson’s reporting on the legislature for the Montana Native News Project sparked national attention and she was consulted for one of MTV’s True Life Crime episodes. The project as a whole is a finalist for an Online Journalism Award.