Alejandra Cancino

I am an investigative reporter based in Chicago with more than 15 years of experience in legacy and nonprofit newsrooms. For nearly a decade, I’ve been a board member of the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, and in that role I have led programs to train young reporters of color and increase government transparency and accountability.

I joined IRE in 2011 as a reporter on the business desk of the Chicago Tribune. My membership was free for a year, thanks to a scholarship I received to attend a week-long watchdog workshop. At the time, I was the youngest member of my team and also the lowest paid, which meant that without the scholarship I wouldn’t have been able to attend the training.

The workshop taught me the skills I needed to write a series of stories about a state tax-incentive program that promised lots of jobs but delivered few. Some of those stories landed on the front page of the paper and had an impact: a short-lived moratorium and an increase in the program’s transparency.

I went on to become an investigative reporter at two separate nonprofit newsrooms, which have become vital in preserving local investigative reporting. Now as a senior investigative reporter with several long-form investigations under my belt, I continue to come back to IRE for training. Every time I’ve been ready for a new challenge, IRE has been there with workshops on interviewing techniques, data analysis and editing.

IRE’s trainings inspired me to pay it forward on the local SPJ board, where I’ve helped organize conferences and workshops, and where I co-created a program to train emerging reporters from marginalized communities on FOIA and other investigative reporting techniques. I know that I can be an effective board member of IRE, too.

If elected to the IRE Board, I would bring a local perspective, support the expansion of IRE’s trainings to more cities in the Midwest, and push for increased affordability for all members. Local journalists are the heart of IRE, and we must do more to meet their needs. I’d also continue to build on the work to diversify the industry and prioritize programs to advance the careers of senior reporters of color to management positions.

Many of IRE's biggest challenges come from outside the organization, including industry layoffs, threats to our democracy, and a declining number of news consumers. To address these challenges, we must work together and overcome internal — and outdated — divides between print, digital, and broadcast journalists. We should do this by continuing to focus our efforts on bringing IRE's career-changing trainings to communities across the country and supporting local investigative reporters to build the skills they need to pursue impactful watchdog reporting across all mediums.