BND welcomes two new reporters to broaden our coverage of local news
Today we’d like to introduce DeAsia Sutgrey and Megan Valley, who will be joining our newsroom this summer as part of Report for America’s 2020 reporting corps.
Sutgrey will cover East St. Louis, Cahokia, Centreville and nearby areas as a community reporter. Valley will be our metro-east education reporter.
Report for America is a nonprofit, national service program that helps place emerging journalists in local newsrooms to fill coverage gaps. The program pays half the salary of each reporter, while the local newsroom and community provide matching funds with direct, tax-deductible contributions to RFA.
Sutgrey and Valley are among 225 journalists who will be placed in 167 newsrooms across the country, RFA announced Thursday.
Sutgrey, of Maywood, Ill., will graduate from the University of Kansas with a bachelor’s degree in journalism this spring. She is an arts and culture reporter at the University Daily Kansan and a culture writer for Blavity. Her journalism experience also includes internships at Vice in 2019 and The Detroit Free Press in 2018 and a Black on Campus student reporting fellowship in 2018 at The Nation.
Valley has been education reporter for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa, since November 2018. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in the Program of Liberal Studies and English in May 2018. Valley was an editor at The Observer, Notre Dame’s daily newspaper, from August 2016 to March 2018. She was an intern for The Saginaw News and MLive.com in 2016.
I asked Sutgrey and Valley to comment on their appointments. Here’s what they had to say:
“I’m thrilled about covering East St. Louis and the surrounding areas, and I’m excited to learn more about those underrepresented communities, “ Sutgrey said. “East St. Louis is typically associated with the violence in the area, so I’m looking forward to highlighting other aspects of the city in my coverage.”
Said Valley: “I’ve covered education for a year and a half, and I’m so excited to continue that work in a new community. To all of the students, parents, teachers and staff: I can’t wait to get to know you and start sharing your stories. “
Our partnership with Report for America, an initiative of the nonprofit GroundTruth Project, is enabling the BND to expand our coverage of the communities around East St. Louis and education in southwestern Illinois. We cover these important subjects now but not as much as we’d like to because our smaller staff is spread thin, with each reporter covering multiple beats.
Sutgrey will cover local government, politics and how tax money is spent in East St. Louis and surrounding communities. She will write about local issues that residents identify as important and capture a sense of place for each town. What’s working, what’s not, and how can citizens make things better? Who is making a difference?
Valley will report on the quality of education and life inside our schools. She’ll be a watchdog over officials and how tax money is spent, and cover the intersection of politics and education. She will write about critical issues facing local schools and solutions for addressing them.
Another top priority for these reporters will be to cover the COVID-19 pandemic, how it affects these communities and the world of education and what the road ahead looks like.
Once Valley and Sutgrey join our team, they will regularly reach out to you for story ideas and to find out what you care about. In the meantime, if you want to connect with them now, you can follow them on Twitter at @deasia_paige and @meganevalley.
The RFA’s decision to include the BND and our readers in this program comes at a critical time. As we discussed earlier this month, local news organizations across this nation are struggling financially as we find the right path to a sustainable future.
We can’t do it without you. If you want a strong, independent local news organization like the BND to continue its work far into the future, we need your help.
The RFA program is a great opportunity to pitch in and support expanded coverage in our region, if you can afford it. We are asking you to consider a tax-deductible contribution to RFA to help fund these two new positions. Here’s a link or you can type this shortened url into your web browser’s address bar: https://bit.ly/BNDRFA It will explain how you can contribute.
Thank you for considering a contribution. Every penny makes a difference.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out at jcouch@bnd.com.
As always, we thank all of our subscribers, contributors and advertisers for their support. It has helped the BND serve our region for more than 162 years.
This story was originally published April 23, 2020 at 10:00 AM.
