inewsource launches education, infrastructure and environment beats with Report for America journalists

We’re proud to announce we’ve hired two additional journalists through our expanded partnership with Report for America, a national nonprofit that helps place reporters in newsrooms to cover beats that don’t get enough coverage.

In June, Andrea Figueroa Briseño and Crystal Niebla will join our reporting roster to cover education and infrastructure.

The new hires underscore our commitment to bringing you reporting that holds public officials accountable and goes in-depth to inform you on the issues that matter most to you. They also reflect our commitment to ensuring that the journalism we produce better reflects the San Diego region. 

Briseño previously worked for The Modesto Bee, covering equity and underserved communities. She’s a first-generation high school and college graduate, perspectives she says will inform her reporting, helping her tap into the challenges the students and families of San Diego Unified School District face and exposing systemic flaws that can pose challenges to their quality of life.

Briseño will work to uncover issues that matter most to the Latino students who make up half of the children enrolled in the state’s second-largest school district. 

Niebla will join inewsource after reporting at the Long Beach Post where she’s covered West Long Beach as a Report for America corps member. Niebla will write about infrastructure and local government in San Diego, pursuing accountability stories. She’ll also run our Fix This community reporting project where we seek your input on what infrastructure issues we should investigate next to improve your quality of life and ensure your tax dollars are being spent wisely. 

Go ahead and tell us what needs fixing! 

Both Niebla and Briseño speak Spanish and will help inform inewsource’s efforts to identify stories for translation for our “En español” website section and ensure they reach our Spanish speaking neighbors. 

The new hires mean inewsource will have three Report for America corps members on our staff. Briseño and Niebla will join Camille von Kaenel, inewsource’s first corps member who has been covering growth and development in San Diego’s backcountry for almost two years. This year, von Kaenel’s beat has shifted to produce investigative and accountability reporting on energy and environmental issues.

Already, her reporting has shed light on record cash payouts San Diego’s power company, San Diego Gas & Electric, distributed to investors just weeks after passing on a surge in the cost of natural gas to customers. 

Our rapid growth at inewsource extends beyond our Report for America hires. We recently added investigative reporters to cover health care and the border and immigration. We’re uniquely qualified to mentor reporters in the Report for America program, giving them training in investigative reporting, but also in broadcast journalism: Our stories air on radio and television for our partner KPBS, and we distribute our stories to more partners to maximize our reach. 

With this news, our goal is to produce more journalism that matters to you, helps improve your quality of life and gives you the information you need to make informed decisions at the ballot box and beyond. To that end, in the coming weeks and months, we’d love to hear from you.