The Center for Community Media is pleased to announce the 30 recipients of the 2022 New York State Elections Reporting Fellowship. Serving communities all over New York State, from Brooklyn to Westchester County and Queens to the Shawangunk Mountain Range, these fellows will each produce four in-depth articles or explainers on the 2022 federal midterm and statewide local elections. The fellowships began March 22, and will continue through Election Day on November 8, 2022.
They serve Black, Latinx, Asian and immigrant communities, hailing from Haiti, Korea, China, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Russia. Their audiences are Jewish and Muslim, Caribbean and African, and more.
Building on the incredible impact of the 2021 City Elections Reporting Fellows, who together produced 120 articles in nine different languages during the 2021 primary elections, this fellowship will deepen local election coverage and civic engagement among immigrants and people of color across New York State during a critical election year.
This fellowship is made possible with generous support from The Charles H. Revson Foundation.
The 2022 New York State Reporting Fellows
Md. (Mohammad) Abedin
✏️ Editor
📍 The Runner News
Md. Abedin has worked in New York City Bangladeshi community newspapers in different capacities. His journalism career began in 1972 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he served as editor and contributed to many outlets including Bangladesh Observer, New Nation and Bangladesh Today, as well as Indian, Pakistani, Nepali and Saudi Arabian print outlets. He has also authored 14 books on Bangladesh’s history and regional politics.
Yolanda Aguilera
✏️ Newsroom Editor/Publicist
📍 Ark Republic
A proud first generation Black Cuban American and native daughter of Newark, NJ, Yolanda Aguilera is a cum laude graduate of Rutgers-Newark where she majored in Criminal Justice as well as Anthropology. As a go-to advocate and translator, she has long played a role in attaining services and voicing the concerns of her immigrant relatives and neighbors. She has previously held public office and worked in the legal field. She applies her dedication to civil service and social advancement as a writer and editor at Ark Republic, serving African as well as Latin Diasporas.
Maria del Carmen Amado
✏️ Editor
📍 New York Hispano
Maria del Carmen Amado is the founder and editor for New York Hispano and a journalist with 30 years of experience in Spanish-language media in the New York metropolitan area, including EFE News Agency, Hoy New York (Tribute), El Nuevo Hudson (Advance Publications), Tiempos del World (News World Communications), Órale New York, HITN-TV, WADO Radio, Noticias 1380, and El Diario. She is proud to have founded the Westchester Hispano, New Jersey Hispano and New York Hispano newspapers. She studied journalism, tourism and hotel management in Peru, where she worked for major media outlets covering politics and economics and did investigative journalism.
Lotus Chau
✏️ Chief Reporter
📍 Sing Tao Daily
Lotus Chau has worked at Sing Tao Daily since 1997 as a community reporter and was promoted to chief reporter in 2002, putting her in charge of the newspaper’s reporting team. She has covered political news for the past decade.
Parveen Chopra
✏️ Founding Editor
📍 The South Asian Times
Parveen Chopra is a media professional with extensive experience in both the US and India. As managing editor (now founding editor) of The South Asian Times, he nurtured it into a well-regarded ethnic paper. He also edited an interfaith journal, “One World Under God.” In India, he founded Life Positive, and worked for India Today. He has contributed articles to Yoga Journal.
Emma Davey
✏️ Editor and writer
📍 Greenpointers
Emma Davey is an editor and writer at Greenpointers, a hyperlocal news publication that serves the North Brooklyn area.
Jeanmarie Evelly
✏️ Editor
📍 City Limits
Jeanmarie Evelly is a metro reporter and the editor at City Limits, a nonprofit news organization where she’s worked since 2018. Prior to that, she was reporter/producer at DNAinfo.com New York and spent several years reporting for community newspapers in the Bronx, including the award-winning Norwood News. She holds a B.A. in English from SUNY New Paltz, a master’s degree from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and an MFA in poetry from CUNY Queens College.
Max Freebern
✏️ General Assignment Reporter
📍 Shawangunk Journal
Max Freebern has spent three years as a reporter for The Shawangunk Journal and The Kingston Wire. Previously, he ran the news desk at his college publication, The New Paltz Oracle, for several years and later covered music festivals and housing crises in Dublin, Ireland.
Bailey Hosfelt
✏️ Reporter
📍 The Examiner News, Examiner+
Bailey Hosfelt is a reporter at Examiner Media, covering local news in Westchester and Putnam County, with a focus on politics, LGBTQ+ issues and climate change. Previously, they wrote for City Limits and Untapped New York. Bailey graduated from Fordham University in 2019 with a B.A. in Journalism.
Marufat Ibrahim
✏️ Reporter/Fact-Checker
📍 Parkchester Times
Marufat Ibrahim specializes in medical and sociopolitical news reporting. She works with Parkchester Times as a reporter, fact-checker and graphic designer.
Andrew Karpan
✏️ Editor in Chief
📍 Bushwick Daily
Andrew Karpan edits Bushwick Daily and writes about local politics, intellectual property lawsuits, pop music, gallery shows and occasionally reviews restaurants.
Larisa Karr
✏️ Reporter
📍 The Haitian Times
Larisa Karr is a reporter for The Haitian Times covering politics, elections and education primarily. A graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, she has interned at CNBC and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. She is also a recipient of a 2021 DBEI Fellowship by Investigative Reporters & Editors.
Eunbyul Kim
✏️ Reporter
📍 Korea Daily New York
Eunbyul Kim is a reporter for the Korea Daily New York, a Korean-language newspaper. Previously she worked as a reporter for the Asia Business Daily based in Seoul, Korea. She is interested in the history and the future of the Korean immigrant community.
Marina Lagunova
✏️ Journalist/Advertising Agent
📍 Reklama, Vecherniy NY
Marina Lagunova was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine and graduated from a medical institute with honors with a degree in dentistry. In 1995, she immigrated with her family to the U.S. as a refugee. She has been working for over 10 years as a reporter-journalist at Reklama, a Russian-language newspaper, website, and radio station. She also contributes to the Vecherniy New York newspaper, as well as Your Doctor, Health News and Your House magazines. She covers political events and elections, immigration issues, and education. During the pandemic, she created vaccine and infection prevention community education on her YouTube channel, Lagunova News.
Ariama Long
✏️ Staff Reporter
📍 Amsterdam News
Ariama Long was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. She graduated from Newmark J-School in 2018, having studied audio, arts, and culture reporting and photography. Since then she’s worked for Heritage Radio Network, WNYC, Brooklyn Reporter/Eagle, and PoliticsNY (formerly Kings County Politics). She was a Poynter-Koch Journalism Fellow for 2020-21. She currently reports on politics and elections for New York Amsterdam News.
Gary (Baruch) Lytle
✏️ Staff Writer
📍 The Jewish Press
Gary (Baruch) Lytle is a staff writer at The Jewish Press, a Brooklyn-based weekly. He is an African American Jewish convert, of the Hasidic Orthodox persuasion. Previously, he worked in environmental and social advocacy as an organizer at Sierra Club.
Florence Mafomemeh
✏️ Freelancer
📍 NYCPolitics
Florence Mafomemeh is a multimedia backpack journalist and B Free award-winning community video producer with over six years of experience in producing long- and short-form video and audio stories, and digital journalism. A native of Cameroon, Florence graduated from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY in 2019 with a master’s degree in journalism. While in school, she reported for the NYCity News Service, and was a news reporter and co-anchor for 219 West, a TV news magazine that aired on CUNY-TV. As a field community producer at Brooklyn Free Speech TV, she received the George Stoney B Free Award for B-Informed. She also holds a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism from CUNY–Brooklyn College, a B.A. in English, and an M.A. in the Literatures in English and Commonwealth Nations from the University of Yaounde I in Cameroon.
Sherry Mazzocchi
✏️ Freelancer
📍 Manhattan Times/Bronx Free Press
Sherry Mazzocchi is a reporter for The Manhattan Times and The Bronx Free Press, bilingual English/Spanish newspapers, covering northern Manhattan and The Bronx.
Sachi McClendon
✏️ Politics Reporter
📍 The Riverdale Press
Sachi McClendon is currently the politics reporter at The Riverdale Press. Prior to this he was a local reporter for The Big Bend Sentinel in Marfa, TX, where he covered just about everything from art shows to city council meetings. After graduating from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2019 with an M.S. in Journalism, McClendon worked as a freelancer covering criminal justice. His work has appeared in The Daily Beast, The Marshall Project, USA Today, The Arizona Republic and several other outlets. His investigation into the U.S. Marshals was runner-up in this year’s Harry Frank Guggenheim award for excellence in criminal justice.
Christian Murray
✏️ Editor and co-publisher
📍 Queens Post
Christian Murray is the editor and founder of the Queens Post. The Queens Post was formed in 2010 and consists of 10 neighborhood sites. In 2021, the sites collectively generated approximately 20 million page views. Murray is a veteran journalist who worked as a reporter for Newsday and Thomson Reuters prior to establishing the company. He has a master’s degree from the Columbia School of Journalism and is a graduate of the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
Linda Nwoke
✏️ Senior Writer
📍 The Immigrant’s Journal
Linda Nwoke is a freelance senior writer for The Immigrant’s Journal, and contributes specials to the Caribbean America Weekly and Workers’ World Today publications. She has broad experience in writing and research across issues of immigration, politics and health.
Kishor Panthi
✏️ Editor-in-Chief
📍 Khasokhas.com
Kishor Panthi is the founder and editor-in-chief of Khasokhas, a New York-based outlet that publishes in Nepali and English. He is the author of two books, “Kampan,” and “Zero Mile.” He writes about social issues, immigration, and politics. As the first accredited Nepali journalist by the U.S. Department of State, he also received the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award, signed by US President Joe Biden. Further, in recognition of the service of humanity through journalism, CICA International University bestowed him with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters.
Andrea Pineda-Salgado
✏️ Community Reporter
📍 Epicenter-NYC
Andrea Pineda-Salgado is a bilingual journalist based in New York. She is the community reporter for Epicenter-NYC, a community journalism initiative. As a journalism student, Andrea covered the 2020 presidential election, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement. As part of her thesis, she produced a documentary entitled: Surviving Corona: The Street Vendors Caught in the Middle of The Virus and The Neighborhood. Andrea’s work at Epicenter-NYC continues to uplift voices of the marginalized. She’s written stories on vaccine equity, the fight to fund excluded workers and immigrant tenants who were victims of a fire. Andrea is a 2021 graduate from New York University, with a bachelor degree in Journalism and Media, Culture and Communications.
Luis Rodriguez Sr.
✏️ Publisher/Owner
📍 La Ultima Hora dba
Luis A. Rodriguez Sr. owns La Última Hora, a Hispanic newspaper in Buffalo, New York, that he started because of the lack of information and acknowledgement that Hispanics weren’t receiving from the standard newspapers in Western New York. Our focus was to bring attention and reach the thousands of Hispanics living in upstate New York. We became the Hispanic yellow pages of services in our community.
Amanda Salazar
✏️ Freelance Reporter
📍 PoliticsNY
Amanda Salazar is a senior at Baruch College double majoring in journalism and political science, where she’s the editor-in-chief of her campus newspaper, The Ticker. She’s written for PoliticsNY, BORO Magazine, Gotham Gazette, DCReport, The Queens Daily Eagle, Tower Times and Dollars & Sense Magazine.
Scott Stiffler 
✏️ Founder/Editor
📍 Chelsea Community News
Scott Stiffler is the founder and editor of Chelsea Community News. He also is a freelance contributor of news and arts articles to, among others, the Los Angeles Blade, the Washington Blade, and The Advocate. Other publications he contributed to includes Gay City News.
Gery Vereau
✏️ Freelancer
📍 Reporte Hispano
Gery Vereau has been a journalist and photographer for 37 years. He began in Chimbote, a province of Peru, in the 1980s, working for local newspapers, and later he was a correspondent for national newspapers until he went to work for the prestigious Caretas magazine. Since 2000, he has worked in newsrooms in New York and New Jersey, such as Hoy, Latin Week, Hispanic Hour, Noticia Hispanoamericana, NY al Día, Diario de México USA edition, and Reporte Hispano.
AJ Woodson
✏️ Editor-In-Chief
📍 Black Westchester
AJ Woodson is the editor-in-chief of Black Westchester and co-owner of Urban Soul Media Group, the parent company. AJ is a father, author, writer, rapper, radio personality, hip-hop historian and a freelance journalist whose byline has appeared in several print publications and online sites including The Source, Vibe, the Village Voice, Upscale, Sonicnet.com, Launch.com, Rolling Out Newspaper, Spiritual Minded Magazine and several others.
Liena Zagare
✏️ Editor & Publisher
📍 Bklyner
Liena Zagare is an award-winning reporter and editor in NYC. For the last 10 years she has been the editor and publisher of Bklyner, a local news site in Brooklyn, NY.
Yiyan Zheng
✏️ Reporter
📍 World Journal
Yiyan Zheng is an award-winning journalist and reporter at World Journal, the largest Chinese-language daily newspaper in North America. Her multimedia work has appeared in media outlets such as World Journal, Sampan Newspaper, Beijing TV, Propeller TV and City Limits. She is currently Queens-based and delves into topics and subjects including education, inequality and Asian American communities.