Report for America, a national journalism service program, announced the selection of a new cohort of journalists who will join the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an award-winning environmental journalism collaborative.
The 11 new journalists who will work with the Ag & Water Desk are among the 2024-25 corps members selected by Report for America. Six new Ag & Water Desk journalists were announced today, April 24, and additional hires are set to be announced in the coming weeks.
Founded in 2021, the Ag & Water Desk is an independent reporting network based at the Missouri School of Journalism, in partnership with Report for America and the Society of Environmental Journalists, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. The Desk’s collaborative coverage of the Mississippi River Basin, the nation’s largest watershed, is free for any news outlet to republish.
“We’re growing, and now we’ll be able to reach new communities that haven’t had this kind of local environmental reporting,” said Sara Shipley Hiles, executive director of the Desk and a faculty member at the Missouri School of Journalism. “We hope to show people how environmental issues connect us, even across state lines.”
“By keeping people informed about what is happening in their regions, the Desk is bringing vital coverage back to environmental news deserts,” said David Kurpius, dean of the School of Journalism. “With a larger network, that impact grows stronger, both for the communities served and for the journalists receiving valuable training and experience.”
Starting in July, the new Ag & Water Desk journalists will cover water, agriculture, climate change and more from local newsrooms in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee. These new partner outlets will expand the collaborative’s footprint to include every mainstem Mississippi River state and will help reach more diverse audiences in new regions and additional media formats.
The new cohort will produce regional, multimedia environmental journalism with Desk editorial director Tegan Wendland and their home editors, alongside members of the Desk’s founding Report for America cohort at partner newsrooms in Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and contributors elsewhere. Ag & Water Desk journalists receive ongoing training, mentorship and expenses-paid travel to the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, in addition to other benefits.
“Report for America is excited to welcome this new cohort of talented journalists to the Mississippi River Basin project,” said Teri Hayt, Report for America’s director of corps and newsroom excellence. “We look forward to this continued collaboration and the high-quality environmental stories these journalists will provide for their local communities and a national audience.”
“The Ag & Water Desk is such a vibrant group of reporters and editors. We are thrilled to be embarking on this reporting alongside and within this impressive network,” said Janet Saidi, long-form audio producer at KBIA-FM, the Missouri News Network’s NPR member station and a host newsroom for a new Ag & Water Desk reporter. “With the current challenges in funding models and building trust in journalism, collaborations that combine efforts and ideas and expertise are valuable to our work.”
News editors can sign up for story alerts and free republication access to all of the Ag & Water Desk’s stories, which can include text, photos, audio/video elements, data and graphics, translations and more.
The journalists of the Desk have created more than 1,000 stories to date, including more than 100 collaborative stories that have been published in hundreds of news outlets, from small rural newspapers and radio stations to national media such as the Associated Press and NPR. The Desk’s journalism has been honored by Covering Climate Now, the Society of Environmental Journalists, North American Agricultural Journalists, the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists and the Center for Collaborative Media.
See the new cohort’s bios below, and keep up with the Ag & Water Desk by signing up for a free weekly newsletter of latest stories and more environmental news from the Mississippi River basin.
Lucas Dufalla
Mississippi River Basin focused on Arkansas
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Little Rock, Arkansas
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.
Grace Fiori
The Missouri River Basin, including tribal nations along the river
Kansas City PBS/Flatland, Kansas City, Missouri
Prior to joining Buffalo’s Fire, Grace 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. Grace has been passionately involved in both journalism and agriculture since her teenage years, spending multiple seasons on diversified vegetable farms.
Julie Freijat
Water and sustainability in the Heartland
Kansas City PBS/Flatland, Kansas City, Missouri
Freijat previously served as a data reporter for Kansas City PBS through the Dow Jones News Fund, producing data-driven articles about local and state issues. She also held two internships at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where she gained valuable experience in science communication working across platforms. Freijat was also heavily involved in her campus newspaper at Kansas State University, where she served in multiple leadership roles and won awards for her design and writing at the state and national levels. Freijat received her master’s in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2024, and graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a minor in biology in 2022. While at Mizzou, Freijat worked as a research assistant for Investigative Reporters and Editors and served as a student staffer at the Reynolds Journalism Institute Innovation Lab.
Leslie Hurtado
Clean air, water, and agricultural systems in northern Illinois
WNIJ-Northern Public Radio, DeKalb, Illinois (returning partner)
Hurtado is an award-winning journalist who contributed regularly to Cicero Independiente. Her journalism career includes reporting for WBEZ Chicago, City Bureau, WTTW Chicago, Borderless Magazine and Telemundo Chicago. Her work in 2022 covering Pilsen’s art history for WBEZ’s Curious City earned her a regional Edward Murrow award and a Peter Lisagor award nomination. Hurtado’s collaborative investigations into traffic stop disparities with Chicago Reporter alumni and WBEZ have contributed to state-level efforts to address racial disparities.
Illan Ireland
Environmental reporting across Mississippi
Mississippi Free Press, Jackson, Mississippi
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, where he reported on the escalating drug overdose crisis in New York City and the near collapse of the local shelter system. He’s a native Spanish speaker, a proud Mexican American and a lover of movies, soccer and unreasonably spicy foods.
Elise Plunk
Water and its impact in Louisiana
Louisiana Illuminator, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
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. Plunk’s favorite class in college was environmental journalism, where she learned to connect her passion for the natural world with her studies in reporting. When she isn’t working, she loves making art from upcycled materials.
Phillip Powell
Arkansas agriculture and environment
Arkansas Times, Little Rock, Arkansas
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, along with building multimedia skills in podcasting, photography, and video journalism. 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.
Harshawn Ratanpal
Environmental impacts on rural communities
KBIA-FM, Columbia, Missouri
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. He started his career in the 7th grade, writing for his school paper, the PawPrints. In his free time, Ratanpal makes music, lifts weights and climbs rocks.
This post is being updated regularly as additional corps members are announced. Last update: May 7, 2024