A support group and a lab in the St. Louis area provide resources for people with the allergy to mammal products — and evidence that its effects can be reversed.
Our new cohort joins returning partners, newsrooms hosting our expert journalists and more.
This week, the Desk is welcoming our second cohort of Report for America journalists based at local news outlets across the Mississippi River basin. The Desk supports these journalists' salaries through Report for America, and they split their local reporting duties with collaborative coverage distributed for free through our network.
Dufalla previously interned at PublicSource, an investigative nonprofit newsroom in his hometown of Pittsburgh. There, he covered housing and economic development in the city and its surrounding boroughs. A summer before, he interned at the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest daily newspaper, where he covered small business in southern Maine. He attended Bowdoin College and wrote for the school’s student-run weekly newspaper, The Bowdoin Orient.
Beat: The Missouri River Basin, including tribal nations along the river
Prior to joining Buffalo’s Fire, Fiori reported on the intersection of local economies and agricultural systems, first as an intern and then as a contributing reporter for the Harvard Press in Harvard, Massachusetts. She is a 2024 University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and sustainable agriculture, having served as the managing editor of the student newspaper, the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.
Freijat previously served as a data reporter for Kansas City PBS through the Dow Jones News Fund. She also held two internships at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and served in multiple leadership roles at the campus paper of Kansas State University, where she graduated with a bachelor’s in journalism and minor in biology in 2022. Freijat received her master’s in journalism in 2024 from the University of Missouri, where she worked as a research assistant for Investigative Reporters & Editors and as a student staffer at the Reynolds Journalism Institute.
Before joining the MFP, Ireland completed a fellowship at The Futuro Media Group in New York City, taking on projects related to public health, climate change and housing insecurity. Working with Futuro’s investigative unit, he helped uncover significant disparities in mortgage outcomes between white and Latino homebuyers in New Jersey. Ireland holds a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a master’s degree from the Columbia Journalism School. He’s a native Spanish speaker and proud Mexican American.
Martinez has worked in television, radio and newsprint across multiple states and markets. He cut his teeth in smaller family papers, before working in major syndicates and networks. Martinez has been a mental health correspondent, anchor, producer, legal staff writer, immigration specialist, editor, campaign correspondent, columnist—in addition to covering city, state and federal courts and legislatures. He was the first graduate of Fort Lewis College’s Journalism and Mass Media Studies program.
Beat: Mississippi River Basin focused on Iowa and Illinois
Pinto Ruiz previously interned as a culture reporter in Colombia’s most widely read newspaper, EL TIEMPO. She holds a Master’s degree in Mass Communication from the University of Florida and worked as an editor at WUFT News, focusing on their Spanish content. She also mentored students in reporting Latin American news in Spanish. She is a proud Colombian, so she is always looking for Colombian food and hosting a listening club for her favorite podcast, Radio Ambulante, to speak her native language to stay connected to her roots.
Plunk earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Florida, where she worked as editor-in-chief of Atrium magazine, a narrative nonfiction outlet on campus. She also worked as an environmental communications intern for the Thompson Earth Systems Institute, where she wrote feature stories and produced social media content on environmental topics relevant to Floridians, and as a climate journalist fellow at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications.
As part of his graduate studies at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Powell previously worked as a reporter on Capitol Hill focused on politics and foreign affairs. At Medill, Phillip is taking part in large investigative projects with ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He holds his bachelor’s degree in political science from Hendrix College, where he was a staff writer for The Profile and Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning Aonian Literary Magazine. He graduates from Northwestern in June with a Master of Science in Journalism.
Ratanpal previously covered money in politics at OpenSecrets, tracking campaign finance and lobbying data. While attending the Missouri School of Journalism, he covered local government, homelessness and the state legislature for KBIA and the Columbia Missourian and was the news director of the campus student-run radio station KCOU. He holds bachelor’s degrees in journalism and economics. His first real-world gig was interning for his hometown newspaper, The San Diego Union-Tribune.
Beat: Clean air, water, and agricultural systems in northern Illinois
Savage is a journalist focusing on environmental and queer topics. They recently graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. They were awarded the Pulitzer Center Campus Consortium Fellowship to report on landscape-scale ecological restoration in England and its effects on local farmers. They studied ecology at the University of Vermont as an undergraduate. Jess is based in Chicago, and they love to ride their bike around the city.
Beat: The impact of state government in rural West Tennessee
Stephenson previously covered Metro Nashville government at The Tennessean for nearly three years, chronicling the consequences of policy decisions for residents in one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation. Cassandra’s post-collegiate reporting career began in West Tennessee in 2018 when she moved from her hometown in Ventura County, California after graduating from Pepperdine University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. There, she reported on breaking news and justice for a 13-county region. Cassandra joined The Tennessean as a business reporter in 2020.
This fantastic episode of WWNO's Sea Change podcast, co-hosted by our mentor journalist Halle Parker, was honored in the Solutions category of the 2024 Covering Climate Now Journalism Awards.
