WRITING

Houston Chronicle

The Houston Chronicle has served the greater Houston metropolitan area for nearly 120 years. The mission has been to tell the stories of a thriving business community, an innovative medical community and one of the most diverse population in the country. We serve more than 6 million people, about two-thirds of whom are people of color, with a large Latino community and are the largest news gathering operation in Texas.

Commercial Appeal

The Commercial Appeal is 179 years old and has been a pillar of the Mid-South Region. It is based in Memphis, which sits at the nexus of east Arkansas, north Mississippi and West Tennessee, and has long been known as a regional newspaper. It’s focused on Shelby County, Tennessee and DeSoto County, Mississippi. Blacks represent 52 percent of Shelby County’s residents. The newsroom has 27 full-time staffers and two part-time staffers. Four staffers are editors who supervise other staffers.

Ledger-Enquirer

The Ledger-Enquirer is a digital-first, daily local newspaper based in Columbus, Ga., focused on bringing our community engaging and actionable news. We are composed of a small but dedicated crew of journalists. Our veteran journalists are the foundation of our newsroom with valuable contacts built up from years of reporting, the ability to write on any topic in a thorough and accurate fashion and institutional knowledge of our practices and standards. With deep community ties, these reporters have earned first place in recent Georgia APME awards in beat reporting, non-deadline reporting and education coverage. Our younger journalists are all skilled across multimedia forms and often have things to teach their more veteran counterparts. They lift the newsroom spirit, challenge the status quo and ask questions about the community that have long been glossed over. Each day, we focus on sharing fresh content with our readers in the form that best suits them — be it our website, social media platforms or print products.

Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting

The Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit news organization founded in December 2018 by investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell that seeks to empower citizens in their communities by informing and educating the public. It provides free investigative reporting to news organizations in the state hit hard by layoffs.

Carrington Tatum

Carrington Tatum covers poverty, power and public policy in Memphis and Shelby County for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. He has interned with The Dallas Morning News to bolster coverage of the historically Black and brown and underserved southern side of Dallas. He also interned with The Texas Tribune, covering mainly homelessness and higher education. He cut his journalism teeth as a first-generation college student from Garland, Texas, at Texas State University, where he was the first Black editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, The University Star.

Hannah Grabenstein

Hannah Grabenstein covers poverty, power and public policy in Memphis and Shelby County for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Previously, she covered state and local politics for the Associated Press in Little Rock, and has reported on Arkansas law enforcement, environmental issues and history. Her reporting on truancy in Arkansas schools won second place for investigative reporting at the Society of Professional Journalists Arkansas Pro Chapter Diamond Awards in 2019. She’s also been a producer for PBS Washington Week and previously was a production assistant and digital writer for PBS NewsHour. Grabenstein was editor-in-chief of The Point News, the newspaper for St. Mary’s College of Maryland, from which she graduated magna cume laude in 2012. She grew up in Columbia, Maryland, and is an avid Baltimore Orioles fan.

The Connecticut Mirror

The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet with a very clear mission: Produce deep reporting on government policies and politics, to become an invaluable resource for anyone who lives, works or cares about Connecticut, and to hold our policymakers accountable for their decisions and actions. The Mirror’s staff consists of award-winning editors and reporters with decades of experience in Connecticut newsrooms or working for other national or state news operations.

Adria Watson

Adria Watson covers education for The Connecticut Mirror. Watson graduated from California State University, Sacramento in May 2020, where she studied journalism. She interned at The Marshall Project and CalMatters, and has covered a range of topics including criminal justice and the needs of student parents. At Sac State, she worked on the award-winning student publication The State Hornet and published work in The Sacramento Bee. Watson got her start in journalism while attending community college in the Bay Area. As a student at Los Medanos College, she was the managing editor and editor-in-chief for the student-run publication the Experience. Watson proudly grew up in Oakland, California. 

Raymon Troncoso

Raymon Troncoso covers the Illinois statehouse for Capitol News Illinois, with a focus on legislation and issues affecting ethnic communities, minority populations, distressed communities and rural areas. Previously, while attending the University of Florida, he covered local politics and elections, among other things, as a student journalist with WUFT. He was also a Morning Edition host and producer at WUFT TV’s First at Five PBS news show and reported on special projects, earning him Florida AP and regional RTDNA awards. Troncoso was raised in Miramar, FL, where he has been a volunteer wrestling coach at American Senior High School in Hialeah.

Rita Oceguera

Rita Oceguera covers communities that ring Chicago, including Aurora, Cicero, Elgin, Joliet and Waukegan, for Injustice Watch. She earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Northwestern University, where she studied social justice and investigative reporting and focused on a range of Latino issues. During her internship at The Bubble in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oceguera dove deep into the inequalities that women face as soccer players and sharpened her skills as a video editor. She then worked with The Chicago Reporter to examine the spread of business vacancies in Chicago and analyzed a prosperous Latino neighborhood. Her partnership with The Chicago Reporter led her into an investigation of the complexities that low income students face when applying to colleges. Originally from Aurora, Oceguera now lives in Chicago with her fiancé, her pet axolotl (a.k.a. a Mexican walking fish) and an abundance of plants.