Announcing IRE's 2025 Chauncey Bailey Investigative Reporting Fellows

Daniela Ibarra of KSAT-TV in San Antonio, José Ignacio Castañeda Perez of Spotlight Delaware and Aallyah Wright of Capital B News will serve as IRE’s 2025 Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellows.

This yearlong fellowship is designed to increase the range of backgrounds, experiences and interests within the field of investigative journalism, where diverse perspectives are critically important. The fellowship program is open to U.S. journalists of color with at least three years of post-college work experience.

Daniela Ibarra is an award-winning investigative reporter at KSAT in her hometown, San Antonio, Texas. Before heading back home, she worked at KTUL in Tulsa, Oklahoma where her reporting was credited with changing state law. Daniela began her career at KTXS in Abilene, Texas. She served on the national boards of the Society of Professional Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Daniela graduated from the University of North Texas and is the proud daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants.

Ibarra’s project will focus on how, among more than 400,000 teachers and staff members who educate Texas public school students, some have been injured by students in Texas. She will start locally with zooming out to see statewide impacts and what it means for the education workforce which has struggled to recruit and retain personnel at times.

José Ignacio Castañeda Perez, based in Wilmington, Delaware, is an award-winning reporter with Spotlight Delaware, a nonprofit community-powered newsroom in the First State. Originally from Salamanca, Guanajuato, Mexico, Castañeda covered nearly 400 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border for the Arizona Republic/azcentral.com and previously led coverage of historically excluded communities in Delaware for DelawareOnline/The News Journal. Castañeda attended the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, where he was part of the inaugural class of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism.

Castañeda Perez’s project will focus on the treacherous conditions of Delaware’s poultry industry. The lack of proper training has led to an increase in workplace injuries with little recourse for accountability.

Aallyah Wright, based in Washington, D.C., is the rural issues reporter at Capital B. A proud native of the Mississippi Delta, Aallyah previously served as the first Delta education reporter for Mississippi Today before joining Stateline to cover rural affairs. Her dedication to uncovering injustice in rural Black communities has resulted in several honors, including her digital divide series, which is a 2024 Finalist for INN’s Breaking Barriers Award and her story on a rural Black mayor fighting to serve in Alabama, which won a 2023 Anthem and Community Voice Award. She is a producer for StoryWorks Theater, 2022 Maynard 200 Fellow, 2020 Mississippi Humanities Council Preserver of Mississippi Culture Award Recipient and 2018 Educating Children in Mississippi Fellow at the Hechinger Report. Aallyah graduated from Delta State University with a bachelor’s in journalism and minor in communication and theater.

Wright’s project will center on nearly a century of impacts after the passage of the first Farm Bill, formerly known as the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA). Its consequences can still be felt today, particularly on Black farmers in the South. Her project will examine how the policies and the role of the county-based committee systems continue to affect generations of Black families in the South, and how this is one of many of our country’s structures with deep-rooted discrimination in agricultural and financial institutions.

Ibarra, Castañeda Perez and Wright were selected for the fellowship based on the projects they pitched in their applications. They will continue in their current professional roles while receiving a suite of IRE resources and support. These include training at an IRE data journalism bootcamp and both annual conferences, and they will receive IRE data services. Most importantly, they will each receive a mentor network of IRE members who will guide them through their yearlong projects. 

This fellowship was initially made possible thanks to generous donations from IRE members Meghan Hoyer, Megan Luther, Mike Tahani and Mike Gruss. Additional funding was provided by the IRE community and company sponsors ABC News, CNN, ESPN, Gray Television and Hearst Foundations. More than $125,000 has been raised to support the program. The program was renamed for Chauncey Bailey in 2023.

Applications for the 2026 IRE Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship will be available in September 2025.  

If you’d like to donate to the Chauncey Bailey Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship, visit the IRE donation page and indicate your contribution is for the JOC fellowship. 

If you are interested in participating in IRE training events and need financial assistance to attend, check out our fellowships and scholarships.