Eagle hires two reporters to cover employment, climate in partnership with RFA
The Wichita Eagle is excited to welcome two full-time reporters who will begin work in June as part of a grant made through Report for America, a nonprofit journalism and community service organization.
Megan Stringer will write about employment and issues facing the workers in Wichita — topics of particular importance in light of the coronavirus pandemic and its economic effects.
Sarah Spicer will cover the effects of climate change in Kansas and the Midwest, which, from agricultural practices to allergies, have presented a range of new issues and problems to solve.
Report for America on Thursday announced the selection of 225 journalists for its 2020 reporting corps. The journalists will be placed with more than 160 local news organizations, including The Eagle.
The reporting positions come at a time when local journalism is reeling from years of newsroom cuts and unforeseen challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stringer, who will write about employment and workplace issues in Wichita, covered business and economic development for the Wausau Daily Herald and across Wisconsin for the USA Today Network.
While in school at DePaul University in Chicago, Stringer was an associate editor for 14 East Magazine, the online student-run publication. She also interned in the consumer investigation unit of NBC5 Chicago. Stringer grew up in the greater St. Louis area.
Spicer, who will write about the effects of climate change in our region, was born and raised in Neodesha. Spicer has been studying investigative techniques at The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for the past year. While there, she worked as a student assistant for Columbia Journalism Investigations in partnership with ProPublica, investigating dating apps and sexual assault.
While editor-in-chief of her college paper, The Bulletin, at Emporia State University, Spicer wrote a groundbreaking investigative series about a professor who sexually assaulted an undergraduate student and how the university handled Title IX cases. The Kansas Press Association awarded the piece the best investigative story of the year.
Report for America is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms through its reporting corps. The topics the reporters focus on are ones identified by the local news organizations as under-covered issues in their communities. RFA is an initiative of the nonprofit news organization The GroundTruth Project. Among its major funders is the Knight Foundation.
Thursday’s announcement marks a major expansion from the current Report for America corps size of 59 — of whom 90% are returning. The organization also announced a new round of support from the Facebook Journalism Project, which contributed $2.5 million toward the reporting corps.
“It’s now crystal clear that the need for trustworthy, accurate, and local information can be a matter of life and death,” said Steven Waldman, co-founder and president of Report for America, in news release. “This surge of reporters should help meet this moment.”
As part of this initiative, The Eagle is looking for the community’s help. RFA’s program covers a portion of the reporters’ salaries, with the remainder being raised within the community.
Individuals, organizations or businesses can make a tax-deductible contribution directly to Report for America using the form at bit.ly/EagleRFA. Checks can be mailed to Report for America Wichita Eagle Campaign, c/o The GroundTruth Project, 10 Guest Street, Boston, MA 02135.
We look forward to adding two journalists to our team and providing even more essential local news.