Report for America Fellow Sriya Reddy will join the Dallas Morning News newsroom in June to help with coverage of southern Dallas.
Reddy, who will graduate from Southern Methodist University in May, will spend a year writing for The News on income inequality, housing, and other community issues in south Dallas.
She is one of 300 journalists selected for the national program that places journalists in newsrooms across the country to cover undercover issues in local communities.
Reddy completed an internship with The News’ breaking news team in 2019 and 2020. She said she was honored to come back to The News to cover southern Dallas, which she believes is “important because it’s long been misrepresented and has a lot” in the past. to offer.”
“We are very excited to be working with Sriya again and for her to cover south Dallas,” said Keith Campbell, Editor-in-Chief of The News. “We continue to see a critical need for cover there. We strongly believe in Report for America’s mission and we look forward to working with the organization since 2018. “
Reddy has lived in Texas for most of her life and has experience with multiple media outlets in the area. She works as an intern in podcast production at KERA-FM (90.1) and last summer reported for the Dallas Free Press on food insecurity and other issues in the south of Dallas. She is also editor-in-chief of the SMU campus newspaper.
Report for America, an initiative of the nonprofit The GroundTruth Project, was founded in 2017 and expanded from last year’s group of 225 reporters to include 135 colored journalists this year. The host editorial offices were selected in December as part of a national competition.
“The crisis of our democracy, disinformation and polarization is in many ways a consequence of the breakdown of local news,” said Steven Waldman, co-founder and president of Report for America, in a written statement. “We have a unique opportunity to reverse this decline by filling newsrooms with talented journalists who not only see journalism as a public service but can create trustworthy connections with the communities they serve.”
Report for America Fellows’ salaries are shared between the program and local newsrooms.
The News was a participant in the first group of Report for America fellows when reporter Obed Manuel joined the staff in 2018 to cover second-generation immigration issues. Reporter Brooklynn Cooper, the 2020-21 season scholarship holder, wrote corporate and breaking news last year documenting the troubles facing the southern Dallas community.
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