Knight-Wallace Fellows 2025-2026


About the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists

The Knight-Wallace Fellowships provide accomplished journalists an academic year of study, collaborative learning and access to the resources of the University of Michigan to pursue ambitious journalism projects, tackle challenges facing the journalism industry and participate in weekly private seminars with journalism leaders, renowned scholars, media innovators and social change agents. This cohort marks the 52nd class of Fellows in the program’s history.


Knight-Wallace Fellows and Their Journalism Projects

Tim Alberta

Tim Alberta is a journalist, author and staff writer for The Atlantic. He formerly served as chief political correspondent for POLITICO. In 2019 he published “American Carnage: On the Front Lines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of President Trump,” which debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list. In 2023 he published, “The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism,” which spent 11 weeks on the Times bestseller list. Other career highlights include co-moderating a 2020 presidential debate and winning the National Magazine Award for his profile of then-CNN Worldwide chairman Chris Licht. Alberta is a proud graduate of Michigan State University.

Analyzing the Erosion of Americans’ Trust

Decades of polling and research document the rate at which Americans have lost confidence in their country’s most essential institutions: the federal government, public education, law enforcement, the ballot box, Wall Street, organized religion, the health-care system, and of course, news media. As a joint Social Science Fellow with the university’s Institute for Social Research, Alberta will set out to make sense of the cynicism, misinformation and mad-as-hell populism that have, over a period of decades, combined to usher in this new, post-trust society.

Tim Alberta is the James S. House and Wendy Fisher House Social Science Fellow.

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David de Jong is a journalist and author who currently works as a Middle East correspondent for Het Financieele Dagblad, the Netherlands’s premier business newspaper. His stories are known for holding the rich and powerful accountable. De Jong’s first book, “Nazi Billionaires: the Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties,” was published in 2022 by HarperCollins and has since been translated from English into more than twenty languages. De Jong previously reported for Bloomberg News, covering European banking and finance from Amsterdam and hidden wealth and billionaires from New York. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair and Bloomberg Businessweek, among other publications. De Jong hails from Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Investigating the Education Policy Influence of Michigan’s Dutch Business Dynasties

De Jong will investigate how Michigan’s Dutch-American business dynasties are influencing U.S. education policy. These business leaders, who have built wealth and influence in western Michigan, consistently lobby for school choice, voucher programs, privatization, subsidized religious education and other major changes to public education.

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Ismail Einashe is a London-based journalist and author whose work on migration and refugee issues has appeared in numerous publications – including Foreign Policy, The Guardian, BBC News, The Nation, The Sunday Times and ArtReview. He is the author of “Strangers” (2023), a book by Tate Publishing that explores migration through the lens of art, and he co-edited “Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere” (2019), a collection of critical essays examining how migrants are represented in European media. Einashe is also part of a team of journalists working on a cross-border journalism collaborative called Lost in Europe, which investigates the disappearance of child migrants.

Reimagining Migration Reporting Through the Lens of Art and Trauma

Einashe will examine migration reporting by studying the intersection of the science of trauma and the various creative forms that journalists can use in their storytelling. In particular, he will explore the role art can play in going beyond the headlines to reclaim the humanity and dignity of those affected by global displacement.

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Heidi Groover is a real estate reporter for The Seattle Times, where her coverage of the region’s housing crisis spans market trends, land-use debates, eviction proceedings and more. In 2022, the National Association of Real Estate Editors recognized three of her stories, including an article on the struggle to find affordable housing for newly resettled refugees, as the best collection of work by a reporter covering residential real estate. Before The Seattle Times, Heidi got her start in alt-weeklies, reporting for The Inlander in Spokane, Washington, and The Stranger in Seattle. She is a graduate of the University of Montana and a proud member of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild.

Exploring How America’s Housing Market Left the Middle Class Behind

America’s housing crisis has locked many young people out of homeownership, left scores of people struggling to cover the rent each month and reshaped towns and cities across the country. Groover will study the political and economic forces that led housing costs to greatly outpace working-class incomes, as well as the ways that the vanishing American dream will change our communities for generations to come.

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Katelyn Harrop is an independent journalist with a focus on impact-driven reporting, often told through a local narrative. She has covered local and national politics in the Midwest, climate change solutions in New England and federal policies and culture for a national audience. She most recently worked as a senior producer at WBUR, Boston’s NPR station, where she directed a partnership between the investigative newsroom ProPublica and the public radio show On Point that focused on building out investigative reporting for a broadcast audience. Harrop was also a founding producer of WBUR’s The Common, a daily, local-first news and culture podcast. Previously, she worked on audio projects for multiple regional and national public radio collaborations and at The Boston Globe and Iowa Public Radio.

Harnessing On-Demand Audio as a Tool to Bolster Local Newsrooms

Podcasts are increasingly reaching younger and more diverse audiences – audiences integral to the future of legacy newsrooms. Harrop will research how local newsrooms can sustainably leverage on-demand audio as a tool to reach new audiences and increase audience diversity. She aims to develop a free, open-source toolkit to help multimedia newsrooms conceptualize, launch and sustain on-demand audio initiatives.

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Elizabeth Jensen

Elizabeth Jensen consults on journalism ethics and standards and is the co-chair of Press Forward Northern Michigan, an organization working to support local journalism in the region. A longtime media beat reporter, Jensen is an expert on U.S. public media and served as NPR’s fifth public editor/ombudsman. In that role, she represented the interests of the public in the newsroom, and created a series of live events where NPR journalists discussed their newsgathering processes and ethical decisions. Over her career, she has reported for the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, was a regular contributor to The New York Times, investigated vegetarian marshmallow fraud for CNBC, and taught food journalism at New York University. A native of Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, she moved back to her home state in 2021 and has been working since then to understand the changing information landscape.

Crafting a Sustainable Local News Model for a Northern Michigan

Jensen will research strategies to support regional news networks – including organizational structure, platforms and diversified business models. Her work will bring together new and existing newsrooms across the 23, mostly rural, counties that comprise Northern Michigan. The resulting news association would work collaboratively to deliver strong reporting and build trust, media literacy and civic engagement.

Elizabeth Jensen is a Great Lakes Local News Fellow.

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Hyeonjun Lee is a reporter at Korea’s public broadcast network, KBS, with experience covering both the ruling and opposition parties. Recently, he has focused on South Korea’s policies and diplomacy as a reporter covering the presidential office. Lee believes broadcast journalism’s competitive edge lies in documentary production and disaster coverage. At KBS, he has produced documentaries on topics such as the semiconductor competition between Samsung and TSMC, the effectiveness of masks during the COVID-19 pandemic and citizens fighting against the military during the Myanmar coup. He has also reported from disaster sites like Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the Nice terror attack, and the earthquake in Kumamoto, Japan.

Examining the Vision and Strategy of AI-Supported Journalism in Global Media

Lee will research U.S. media strategies for leveraging Artificial Intelligence. He is interested in how editorial applications and production innovation with AI differs based on the size, scale, and resources of various news organizations, as well as how challenges and opportunities vary across platforms. He will deepen his understanding of the fast changing landscape for broadcast media and study how U.S. network strategies to remain competitive can be applied to Korea’s public broadcast networks.

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Ashish Malhotra is a producer for Al Jazeera English, where he has spent close to a decade in various roles for the channel’s television and digital departments. He’s currently a producer for Al Jazeera’s daily, international news podcast, “The Take.” In between stints at Al Jazeera, Malhotra spent more than three years based in India, where he worked for the Hindustan Times and international outlets including Deutsche Welle, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The Times of London and CityLab. Malhotra has worked across platforms – from magazine, to TV, documentary, print and podcasts – and has reported on issues and events such as the Rohingya Refugee Crisis, the 2019 Indian election and the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States.

Exploring How Sports Podcasts Build a Sense of Community 

Podcasts have reshaped the way journalists, celebrities and athletes engage with audiences through storytelling to become integral parts of people’s daily lives. Malhotra will explore a variety of audio genres to understand how podcasts can bring people together and make them feel part of a larger community. He will primarily focus on sports podcasts that transcend deeply polarizing social rifts, looking at how strategies and tools used by sports podcasts might be applied to news.

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Rosem Morton is a freelance documentary photographer, registered nurse and educator based in Baltimore. Her work draws from her varied experiences to examine how gender, health and racial inequities shape everyday life. Rosem’s photography and writing have been featured in National Geographic, The Washington Post, NPR and CNN. She is a National Geographic Explorer and a recent International Women’s Media Foundation Fellow. In addition to her reporting, Rosem is a journalism safety trainer and adviser committed to fostering trauma-informed and identity-aware practices that support journalists in the field.

Creating a Collaborative Storytelling Platform for Survivors of Gender-Based Violence

In the U.S., sexual assault occurs every 68 seconds, leaving survivors to navigate isolation and upheaval that can permeate every aspect of their lives. Morton will expand an immersive online platform that uses collaborative multimedia storytelling to foster connection, healing and empowerment for survivors of gender-based violence.

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Brittany Moseley

Brittany Moseley is the culture and arts reporter for Signal Akron, a nonprofit newsroom in Northeast Ohio that fuses community building with local news reporting. In her role, she covers the city’s thriving and diverse creative community – from dancers and painters to arts initiatives and cultural institutions. A lifelong Ohioan, she has spent her career covering the state and the Midwest region. Before joining the Signal Akron team in 2023, Moseley worked as a full-time freelance writer and contributed stories to Cleveland Magazine, the Columbus Dispatch, Next City and Poets & Writers, among others. Previously, she held associate editor roles at Columbus Monthly and Alternative Press. She is a proud graduate of Kent State University’s journalism program.

Creating a Roadmap for Public Arts Funding

Arts communities across America must navigate an ever-changing funding landscape, a situation that is even more turbulent for underserved communities. As a joint fellow with the University of Michigan Arts Initiative, Moseley will explore the successes and shortcomings of public funding for the arts and the impact that well-funded art programs have on American cities.

Brittany Moseley is the Knight-Wallace Arts Journalism Fellow.

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Tenzin Pema is the Director of Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service, where she leads critical reporting on Tibet across multiple formats and platforms, including groundbreaking coverage of the Dege dam protests in 2024. She has two decades of experience as a reporter, editor, and newsroom leader in global media firms. She served as Editor of Strategic Initiatives at Economic Times and as Editorial Head at YourStory Media. She spent a decade with Reuters, where she was a senior editor and spearheaded the creation of a dual-language Middle East news team – a first for its Bengaluru newsroom. She holds a postgraduate diploma in Broadcast Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism in India.

Mapping Contested Terrains and Documenting Cultural Suppression in Tibet

This project investigates China’s multi-pronged strategy to suppress Tibet’s cultural, linguistic and historical identity. Pema will document how Beijing’s construction of dual-purpose border villages along Tibet’s border with India, expansion of colonial boarding schools, and systematic renaming campaigns work in tandem to transform Tibet’s demographic landscape and cultural geography. Her work seeks to illuminate the scale and scope of these interconnected policies, despite severe access restrictions and governmental denials.

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Nidhi Prakash is a journalist whose reporting is focused on accountability, politics and the environment. She previously worked as an energy and environment reporter for POLITICO and a White House reporter for BuzzFeed News. Prakash broke the story of the under-counted death toll in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and closely covered the fallout of that and other natural disasters. Over the course of Prakash’s 15-year career, her work has taken her from local community board meetings in New York City to the Syrian refugee crisis in the Greek islands. She was on the campaign trail for the 2020 election, following Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Prakash grew up in India, New Zealand and Australia, before living in the UK, Chile and now the U.S. She speaks English, Spanish and Tamil.

Researching Disparities In the Climate Crisis

Prakash will research stories of climate change impact on low-income regions, exploring economic and infrastructural issues, conflicts driven by resource scarcity and ground-level resilience. Her work will highlight disparities and challenges both within the U.S. and internationally.

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Clavel Rangel Jimenez

Clavel Rangel Jimenez is a journalist with more than 15 years of experience covering labor unions, migration, human rights, climate, corruption and extractive industries in Venezuela and across the Americas. She co-founded the Venezuelan Amazon Journalists Network, an initiative that promotes investigative journalism, knowledge exchange and collaboration among reporters. Rangel began her career as a reporter and editor at Correo del Caroní, an award-winning regional newspaper in southern Venezuela, where she extensively covered the region. She later served as a correspondent at El Nacional and El Pitazo; as Editor-in-Chief of the Spanish-language newsletter Soy Arepita; and as a Senior Editor at El Tiempo Latino in Washington, D.C. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, Chicago Health Magazine, and Armando.info. Originally from Venezuela, she now resides in the United States.

Documenting the Adaptation and Resilience of Venezuelan Migrants

The adaptation of forcibly displaced Venezuelan migrants and asylum seekers in the United States has been heavily shaped by political polarization and anti-immigrant rhetoric amplified during election cycles. Rangel will investigate how misinformation and partisan narratives have influenced their displacement and integration. Her work will also explore depolarization strategies and human rights-centered documentation of Venezuelan migration.

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Irene Romulo

Irene Romulo is the co-founder of Cicero Independiente, an award-winning, bilingual newsroom that reports with and for the majority immigrant community of Cicero, Illinois. She leads the organization’s nationally recognized community engagement strategies and fundraising efforts. Romulo began her journalism career as a reporting fellow at City Bureau in Chicago in 2019. Later, as a 2021 Ida B. Wells Fellow at Type Investigations, she published a year-long investigation into the use of gang contracts to criminalize students. Her work helped equip parents and young people with “know your rights” information.

Building a Local Newsroom for Our Shared Future

Journalism can be a powerful tool that connects neighbors and equips them to change the world around them. Romulo will explore how to build, expand and sustain a community-owned newsroom that serves as an information, teaching and gathering space for her community and beyond.

Irene Rolumo is a Great Lakes Local News Fellow.

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Simone Sebastian is a newsroom leader with 25 years of experience covering many of the nation’s defining events. Most recently, she was the founding editorial director of Capital B, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to uncovering important stories about how Black people experience America today. There, she built three multiplatform newsrooms and led her teams to break national news stories and earn multiple awards. Prior to this role, she managed The Washington Post’s America Desk and co-led the newspaper’s “George Floyd’s America” project. She also directed the newspaper’s coverage of the 2019 mass shootings in Dayton and El Paso. A metro-Detroit native, Sebastian is a graduate of Columbia University and the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she chairs the alumni board.

Identifying Health Care Deficiencies that Fuel Postpartum Morbidity

Amid the high and worsening maternal mortality rate in the United States, millions of women survive childbirth but are left with physical, mental and emotional injuries overlooked by the health care system. Sebastian will explore the gaps in postpartum medical care that have created a silent epidemic of pain, discomfort and life-threatening complications.

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Jędrzej Słodkowski is a reporter, editor and current deputy head of the culture section of “Gazeta Wyborcza,” Poland’s largest newspaper. He started his professional journalism career as a music critic 20 years ago. He now specializes in interviews with the most interesting figures in Polish culture. Recently, Słodkowski has focused on migration and refugee issues, editing an annual special edition of “Gazeta Wyborcza” authored by refugees themselves. He has also covered topics such as child slavery in Ghana, Kyiv’s music scene during the war and Nepalese mercenaries hired by Russia to fight in Ukraine.

Studying Innovative Approaches to Migration and Refugee Reporting

Issues of migration will fundamentally shape the future of our global society, and prevailing narratives have lost their efficacy. Current debates reinforce existing divisions rather than contributing to substantive and positive progress. Słodkowski will explore approaches to journalistic coverage of migration that minimize prejudices yet honestly address the problems and challenges.

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Sarah Souli has been living and reporting across the Mediterranean for more than a decade. Raised in the U.S. by a French mother and Tunisian father, her multicultural and multilingual background has deeply informed her perspective and work. She is most interested in how behemoth political structures intersect with the resilient and textured lived experiences of people. Her stories, including a multi-year investigation of a triple femicide on the Greek-Turkish border, have appeared in The Atavist, The Economist, POLITICO, The Guardian, Vice Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler and others. Prior to her work as an independent journalist, she was a staff writer for COLORS Magazine.

Deconstructing and Reimagining Narratives Around Migration 

Despite being a natural human expression and inclination, migration remains politically polarized and socially demonized. How, as journalists, do we capture the interconnectedness of our human experience? Focusing on movement across the Mediterranean, Souli will research narrative structures and historic methodologies that can contribute to more holistic reporting about migration in the region.

[email protected]


Nina Weingrill is a civic media practitioner and journalist with more than 18 years of experience fostering community engagement in journalism. As co-founder and former director of Énois, one of Brazil’s first civic media organizations, she has influenced industry-wide practices that prioritize marginalized voices and local community building. She has collaborated on global initiatives like the Civic Media Census at News Futures, mapping practices that strengthen communities and expand access to information. Weingrill also coordinated the design of Brazil’s first journalism fund, as part of an international coalition. Currently, she researches how local information infrastructure can reduce inequality, particularly in crisis-impacted areas where journalism must be built from the ground up.

Exploring Sustainable Models for Local Information Ecosystems

Weingrill will explore sustainable models for building local information ecosystems, focusing on the role of civic actors—such as public health workers and grassroots organizations—in bridging gaps left by traditional media. Her project aims to inform public policies that address information inequality, fostering more resilient and participatory media landscapes in underserved regions.

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Announcing 2025-2026 Knight-Wallace Fellowship Class»