New reporters with Report for America to expand Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk
Based in local newsrooms across the nation’s largest watershed, the new cohort will work alongside the award-winning journalism collaborative’s founding members to produce regional environmental coverage that is free for any news outlet to republish.
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. Five 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 award-winning 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.”
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.
We’re growing, and now we’ll be able to reach new communities that haven’t had this kind of local environmental reporting. We hope to show people how environmental issues connect us, even across state lines.
Sara Shipley Hiles
They 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 Desk’s 11 new partner newsrooms, announced in December 2023, 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 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 one of the new Ag & Water Desk reporters. “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 LGBT 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.
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.
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.
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.
Updated: April 24, 2024