I remember my first significant journalism internship. Out of Topeka, I covered Kansas City floods that mired downtown businesses in mud and later, as a newly full-time reporter, the reverberations of public school desegregation a quarter century after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. the Board of Education. I was excited, anxious and eager to learn how to become a better journalist.
Our newest group of NEWSWELL interns this summer are covering stories in a different world than the one I encountered, but their intentions and attitudes are similar — they want to figure out how to best cover communities in a way that is respectful, engaging and helpful — whether that’s in San Diego, Stockton, Santa Barbara or Chicago’s west side.
We wrote a few weeks back about the Santa Barbara News-Press’ Sara Miller McCune News-Press Summer Fellows program, and today, we wanted to introduce you to interns at the rest of our sites. We hope you’ll read their stories, watch their videos or look through their photos as they work with colleagues, editors and their communities to hone their work.
NEWSWELL Chicago
Lillian Ali, Emma Bradford and Sydney Lovan are summer interns for NEWSWELL Chicago, which includes Austin Weekly News, Riverside-Brookfield Landmark, Forest Park Review and Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest.
Lillian Ali, a Northwestern University student, has worked for the campus publication. She also has worked for Jadey, a new online magazine to help people navigate cancer; the Dayton Daily News on data and other reporting; and the Smithsonian magazine, where she wrote about a trailblazing group of Black paramedics and the Middle Eastern cookie Ma’amoul. She has an interest in public health and science.
Emma Bradford is a Report for America intern from Arizona State University who also is reporting across the Chicago-area newsrooms. A senior reporter for the campus publication, State Press, she covered politics and money issues in the Washington, D.C., bureau of Cronkite News, a professional program at ASU. Her work will mainly focus on the Austin Weekly News and Forest Park Review, where she wrote about a former cigar lounge that will become home to the local chamber of commerce.
Sydney Lovan, a recent graduate of ASU, is a visual journalist who once walked 40 miles alongside a group of protesters in California for a multimedia program. She has covered breaking news, longform storytelling and sports (breakdancing and golf) in various parts of the U.S., at the Paris Olympics and in Rwanda.
Stocktonia
Andrea Baltodano, left, and Emily Hedegard are summer interns for Stocktonia.
Andrea Baltodano, who just graduated from San Joaquin Delta College, came to Stockton, California, after covering political and societal upheaval in her home country of Nicaragua. She focuses on public policy, immigration and civic engagement. She has worked as a freelancer for Stocktonia, an intern for CalMatters and has been an EdSource contributor — while also overseeing her campus publication. She’s covered Stockton city council controversies, a court trial, online hate speech surrounding a tragic shooting that drew national attention and the obstacle-laden path to college for asylum seekers.
Emily Hedegard, an ASU graduate student, is working on projects about schools and school funding for Stocktonia.Hedegard comes to us from ASU’s Knight Center for the Future of News, where she worked as one of the center’s inaugural research fellows and worked on the Journalism + AI Accelerator conference. Hedegard worked in Maine at the Portland Press Herald and The Maine Monitor and also covered elections for the Associated Press. She came to ASU to pursue her master’s degree in investigative reporting.
Times of San Diego
From left, Nicole Abrams, Andi Ruiz and Eileen Mamaghani are summer interns for Times of San Diego.
Nicole Abrams, a San Diego resident who attends Boston University, is eager to explore the area in a new way, as a journalist discovering stories that matter to the community. She is interested in politics and vulnerable communities, with a focus on investigative reporting. Her story on the lack of safe biking infrastructure in Boston won a first-place award for investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper & Press Association. She has worked for Your Arlington and the Flipside and is senior writer and investigative editor for the campus newspaper.
Andi Ruiz, who attends ASU, has a fervor for covering local politics. She’s the lead reporter on the politics desk for the campus newspaper. She’s written about food insecurity and military federal contracts and is a social media assistant for the BRIDGS Initiative. Her work for Times is already varied — she’s written about marine revitalization, an escape-room scavenger hunt with a twist and politics.
Eileen Mamaghani, an ASU student working on her master’s degree, has worked for PBS News in Phoenix. She wants to cover communities in a way that recognizes people’s humanity. Her Times’ stories so far include mental health funding at risk in California and, as a journalist with Iranian roots, this story of San Diego residents’ trauma from the Iranian war. She wants to use her background in finance for data analysis in her reporting, and she hopes to paint a bigger picture for San Diegans through community reporting.
This update appeared in our June 26, 2026, newsletter. This version has been lightly edited for clarity.