2016 Fellows
Eva-Marie Ayala is a reporter for The Dallas Morning News where she often writes about complex school finance issues across Texas, booming enrollment in one of the nation’s fastest growing districts, ethics in government and bungled construction projects. Her in-depth coverage of capital appreciation bonds highlighted the widespread use of such controversial borrowing practices, which helped spur changes to Texas law that now limits their use. Prior to joining The News, she worked for her hometown paper the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Follow her on Twitter at @EvaMarieAyala.
Matthew Chayes covers New York City Hall for Newsday, his beat since 2013, when he switched from writing about crime. He also volunteers to run workshops for the Columbia Scholastic Press Association and judge contests for the Deadline Club and Society of Professional Journalists. Follow him on Twitter at @chayesmatthew.
Tony Cook is the statehouse reporter for the Indianapolis Star, where he covers the governor, General Assembly and state agencies. Before joining The Star in 2012, he worked at the Toledo Blade, Las Vegas Sun and Cincinnati Post. His work has earned statewide investigative reporting prizes in Ohio and Indiana, and the Society of Professional Journalists named him 2014 Indiana Journalist of the Year. Follow him on Twitter at @indystartony.
Joseph Cranney covers City Hall for the Naples Daily News in Naples, Florida. He writes about politics, housing and race. He previously covered sports for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Follow him on Twitter at @joey_cranney.
Andrew DeMillo is the Capitol Correspondent for the Little Rock bureau of The Associated Press, a position he has held since 2005. He covers Arkansas government and politics for the AP and also writes a weekly news analysis column that appears in newspapers statewide. Follow him on Twitter at @ademillo.
Jamey Dunn is editor of Illinois Issues — formerly a print magazine and now an in-depth digital journalism initiative. She covers the state budget on her Past Due blog at NPRIllinois.org and on air for Illinois Public Radio. She is a graduate of Southern Illinois University Carbondale and the Public Affairs Reporting Program at the University of Illinois Springfield. Follow her on Twitter at @capitolbureau.
Elena Ferrarin covers the city of Elgin for the Daily Herald in the Chicago area, where she is a senior staff writer. She previously worked as a reporter for the Regional News and as a reporter and assistant editor for Reflejos, both in Illinois. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Brown University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Follow her on Twitter at @ElenaFerrarin.
Tristan Hallman is a Dallas City Hall reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He previously covered public safety and breaking news for the paper. He’s a graduate of St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, and a 2012 graduate of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @TristanHallman.
Laura Hancock works for the statewide newspaper in Wyoming, since 2012. She writes about government, health care and elections in a state with small population but larger-than-life characters and landscapes. She has 16 years of journalism experience at newspapers in Wyoming and Utah, where she’s covered beats ranging from energy, business, transportation, education and crime.
Doug Hanks covers County Hall for The Miami Herald, which has him tracking the $7 billion budget of Miami-Dade County, which owns the arena where the Heat play, Miami International Airport and every traffic light in the county.
On the county beat, Doug launched the interactive “Dade Data” feature that explores the details behind some of the county’s most important financial numbers.
Before covering Miami-Dade, he spent about a decade on the Herald’s Business desk, covering real estate, tourism and the economy.
Contact him at dhanks@miamiherald.com and follow him on Twitter at @doug_hanks
Meghan Hoyer is a data journalist at the Associated Press, where she analyzes data and helps disseminate national data sets to reporters across the country, guiding them to find local stories in the numbers. She’s based in Washington, D.C. Until recently, she was a data journalist at USA TODAY, where she worked primarily on health care, veterans issues and criminal justice stories. She previously worked as a data and government reporter at The Virginian-Pilot and the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Fatima Hussein covers jobs and economic issues for the Cincinnati Enquirer, the second largest newspaper in Ohio. She has also worked at the Daytona Beach News-Journal, where she covered business in one of the most blighted areas of the U.S. after the Great Recession. Fatima received her bachelors from the University of North Florida, and juris doctor at Florida Coastal School of Law. She was instrumental there in helping represent families who had immigrated to the United States, as well as individuals with disabilities.
Maria Koklanaris is a senior state tax policy reporter with Tax Analysts, a Washington DC –area non-profit publisher focusing on federal, international, and state tax policy. Before that position, her decades of experience covered a variety of media – she has worked for both weekly and daily newspapers, magazines, both print and online specialty subscription publications, and free online publications. Her specialties include fiscal and education issues, and features. She is a graduate of Penn State University and lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and two children.
Morgan Lee covers New Mexico state government, politics and more as the Santa Fe correspondent for the Associated Press. He previously covered energy and environmental issues from Southern California, and worked as a reporter in Mexico and Central America for the AP.
Jonathan Lemire covers New York City and State politics for The Associated Press. He was hired by The AP to cover the 2013 New York City mayoral election and works out of Room 9 at City Hall covering the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city council, the governor and other local officials. Prior to joining The Associated Press, Lemire worked for 11 years at The New York Daily News, beginning there as an intern right out of college.
Lesley McClurg is Capital Public Radio’s Food and Sustainability reporter in Sacramento. Her work has been featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Marketplace, Latino USA and Here and Now. Before coming to Sacramento she covered energy and the environment for Colorado Public Radio. Lesley got her start in media as a producer for the PBS affiliate in Seattle. Lesley is an Edward R. Murrow and Emmy award-winning journalist.
Dan McKay covers City Hall and county government as a beat reporter for the Albuquerque Journal in New Mexico. His reporting has led to a state investigation into county investments, a $1 million refund from the city to water customers and changes in how the city budgets for police officers. Dan is an Air Force brat who’s lived all over the country, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area and Albuquerque.
Allie Morris is the State House reporter for the Concord Monitor and covers the New Hampshire Legislature, all 424 members. She previously worked at the PBS NewsHour in Washington DC as a producer in the national affairs division.
Mike Morris has covered City Hall for the Houston Chronicle since March 2013, having covered Harris County government for two years prior to that. Before coming to Houston, he covered local government, agriculture, business, sports and other topics at daily and weekly newspapers in the Midwest, winning statewide awards for his work in Ohio and Indiana.
James Morrison has been a producer for Capital Public Radio’s daily interview show “Insight” since 2011, covering municipal bankruptcies, pension reform and the California budget process. Prior to working as a producer, Morrison was a reporter at Capital Public Radio, covering education and city government.
Geoff Mulvihill is a reporter at The Associated Press. Before joining the State Government team in November, he spent 15 years covering New Jersey news for the cooperative, writing about politics, state finances, drug policy, education, and Camden, the nation’s most impoverished city. Previously, he reported for the Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Mike Reicher is a data reporter on the investigative team at The Tennessean, a USA Today Network site. Mike comes from the Southern California News Group, where he investigated Los Angeles-area governments and businesses with data-driven projects. His range of work includes detailing how Sempra Energy’s Aliso Canyon facility polluted heavily, long before the nation’s largest natural gas leak, and showing that the Los Angeles Police Department rarely disciplines cops who violated department policy during shootings. Previously, he was a government reporter at the Orange County Register, where he covered a pension board’s questionable investment practices, politicians’ conflicts of interest and extravagant spending by water district officials. Mike has won awards for investigations from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, among other local and statewide honors. Mike earned a masters in journalism from the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, while interning for The New York Times.
Anna Sanders has covered New York City Hall for the Staten Island Advance since August 2014. Previously she was a news reporter for Metro New York. She graduated New York University in 2013 with degrees in journalism and environmental studies.
Jonathan Shorman is a statehouse reporter at The Topeka Capital-Journal in Topeka, Kan. He covers the Legislature, politics and state agencies. He previously covered the Missouri Statehouse for the News-Leader in Springfield, Mo.
Jason Stein, 40, has reported on politics and business in Madison since 2002, working for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and previously for the Wisconsin State Journal. With co-author Patrick Marley, he wrote “More than They Bargained For: Scott Walker, Unions and the Fight for Wisconsin.”
Paige Sutherland is a general assignment reporter at New Hampshire Public Radio where she covers anything from the State House, the N.H. Primary, court cases, to the state’s ongoing battle with heroin and opioid addiction. Before joining NHPR, Paige was a freelance writer for Boston’s NPR affiliate WBUR, a freelance political reporter for WATD, and a general assignment reporter at the Boston bureau of The Associated Press.
Roger Phillips covers City Hall, courts and local politics for the Stockton Record in California. He attended every session of Stockton’s bankruptcy trial in 2014-15 and was involved in bankruptcy coverage when the city declared Chapter 9 in 2012. He has worked at the Waco Tribune-Herald, Kansas City Star, Long Beach Press-Telegram and Oakland Tribune during his newspaper career and his been at the Record for nine years, covering education before taking over the City Hall beat at the start of 2014.
Kate Elizabeth Queram covers county government for the News & Record, a daily newspaper in Greensboro, N.C. Prior to that, she covered local government and environmental issues in coastal North Carolina, Scott Walker’s union battle in Wisconsin, and Martin O’Malley’s state legislature in Maryland. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland. She loves AP style and would like to pet your dog.
Mike Vilesky is a news reporter for the Wall Street Journal’s Greater New York section focused on New York state politics, higher education, and breaking news. He graduated with a bachelor’s in film and journalism from New York University in 2010 and worked for several years as a freelance celebrity reporter before he was hired by the Journal.
Warren Vieth, 63, is a contributing reporter for Oklahoma Watch, a nonprofit organization that produces in-depth and investigative journalism on important public-policy issues facing the state. Vieth has more than 30 years of professional journalism experience, half as an editor and half as a reporter. He is a former White House reporter, national reporter and assignment editor for the Washington Bureau of the Los Angeles Times. He also worked for newspapers in California, Texas and Oklahoma. Vieth taught journalism for seven years at the University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. He directed the Immigration in the Heartland program sponsored by Gaylord College and the Institute for Justice and Journalism. He spent two years in corporate communications. He grew up in Kingfisher, Okla., and graduated from the University of Oklahoma. He is married to Kathy Vieth, a former nurse. They live in northeast Oklahoma City.
Abigail Wilson is a news reporter at KMUW Wichita Public Radio in Wichita, Kan. She graduated from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., with degrees in journalism and Spanish in 2012. Immediately following, Abigail worked as the news editor of the Dodge City Daily Globe in Dodge City, Kan., where her primary focus was covering crime news.
