Two journalists receive IRE’s 2022 Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship

Robyn Vincent of Mountain West News Bureau and Sergio Martinez-Beltran of NPR’s The Texas Newsroom will serve as IRE’s 2022 Journalists of Color Investigative Reporting Fellows.

Vincent is building an inequality beat at the Mountain West News Bureau, a consortium of NPR stations serving the American West. She has been with the bureau since November 2020. Prior to that, she launched the news department at Jackson Hole Community Radio in Wyoming and was editor of an alt-weekly newspaper there. She is a graduate of Wayne State University.

Vincent’s project centers on the deaths of Indigenous people.

Martinez-Beltran, a Texas political reporter, has been with The Texas Newsroom, a public radio collaboration with NPR and Texas stations since March 2022. Prior to that, he was at Bridge Michigan, and he also worked for Nashville Public Radio. He is a graduate of Michigan State University. 

Martinez-Beltran’s project will dive into the mounting evidence that shows that migrant workers in Texas face uncompensated overtime work, harassment, and outright assault. It will also explore the powers that allow this to happen. 

IRE’s 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 2022 fellowship program is open to U.S. journalists of color with at least three years of post-college work experience.

Vincent and Martinez-Beltran were selected 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 year-long project. 

The IRE Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting 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 $100,000 has been raised to support the program.

Applications for the 2023 IRE Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship will be available in October 2022.  

If you’d like to donate to the fellowship, go here and indicate your contribution is for the JOC fellowship. 

If you are interested in participating in IRE training events, you can check them out here. If you are looking for financial assistance to attend any of these events, you can find the details here.