NEFAC Mentors – Journalism

The New England First Amendment Coalition provides a free mentorship program for journalists working in the region. Reporters, editors and producers looking for guidance in a variety of professional areas can apply to be paired with a veteran journalist with relevant expertise. Below is a list of available journalism mentors.

All news reporters, editors and producers working in one or more of the six New England states are eligible to apply for a mentorship. Mentors are required to provide at least an hour of their time each month for six months as part of the program, but mentees can agree to other time arrangements that work for both parties. Learn how to apply here.

PARIS ALSTON is co-host of Morning Edition and The Wake Up podcast at GBH News. She previously was a host of the NPR podcast “Consider This.” Alston also served as the host of GBH’s digital series Keep it Social.

Mentorship areas include tracking for the air, community storytelling, networking, managing oneself and managing up, having difficult conversations, and work-life balance.

 

LYNN ARDITI joined The Public’s Radio in 2017 after more than three decades as a reporter, including 28 years at the The Providence Journal. She also worked for The Center for Investigative Reporting and at the former Holyoke Transcript-Telegram.

Mentorship areas include access to Rhode Island public health data and records; mining stories; using data in stories; and turning print/web reporting into stories for radio.

 

KAREN BORDELEAU is the director of Career and Professional Development and a visiting professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. She is a retired executive editor of The Providence Journal.

Mentorship areas include newsroom management, career advancement, news writing and editing.

 

DUSTY CHRISTENSEN is an investigative reporter in western Massachusetts, where he teaches journalism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has reported for outlets including The Nation, NPR, The Boston Globe and the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Mentorship areas include public records, investigative journalism, labor reporting, unionizing newsrooms, and covering local news.

 

LYNNE DELUCIA is the co-founder of the Connecticut Health Investigative Team, a news-website featuring health and safety news and investigative stories. She formerly worked as the state editor of the Hartford Courant and led the paper to a Pulitzer Prize in 1999.

Mentorship areas include strategies for coaching writers, building team collaborations, mining stories from beats, using data in stories, and launching news entities.

 

IAN DONNIS has been the political reporter for Rhode Island Public Radio since 2009. He was for many years a regular panelist on WPRI/WNAC-TV’s Newsmakers and is an occasional guest on RI-PBS’ A Lively Experiment.

Mentorship areas include developing story ideas, political coverage, statehouse coverage, cultivating sources, media coverage and using Twitter.

 

DEIRDRE FERNANDES is a reporter for The Boston Globe. Since joining the Globe in 2011, Fernandes has covered insurance, banking, and the economy, writing about how changes in the industry are altering the consumer experience.

Mentorship areas include managing a beat, and how to improve enterprise and education reporting.

 

EDWARD FITZPATRICK is a Boston Globe staff writer covering Rhode Island. He worked for 16 years at the Providence Journal, including eight years as the political columnist and five years as the courts reporter.

Mentorship areas include writing, covering politics and government, and tackling open government challenges.

 

MARCELA GARCÍA is a columnist for The Boston Globe’s op-ed page. She also serves on the Globe editorial board and writes editorials, the daily unsigned essays representing the view of the Boston Globe as a community institution.

Mentorship areas include opinion writing, being a Latina in a newsroom, navigating the industry as a bilingual reporter/WOC, source building, and covering communities of color.

 

AUDITI GUHA is Northwest and Equity Reporter/Editor at VTDigger. Originally from Calcutta, India, Guha has worked for several newspapers. Most recently, she covered race and justice at Rewire.News, and higher education at the New Bedford Standard-Times.

Mentorship areas include general news and investigative reporting, using social media in reporting, building relationships (especially for POC/WOC), cultivating work/life balance.

 

MEGHAN E. IRONS is an associate professor of the practice of impact journalism at Boston University. Previously, she worked as an investigative reporter at The Boston Globe, covering topics that touch on culture, politics and social issues.

Mentorship areas include enterprise reporting and editing, narrative writing, building team collaborations, mining stories from beats, and launching news entities.

 

ELIZABETH KOH is an investigative reporter for The Boston Globe on the paper’s quick strike team. Before joining the Globe, she was a Seoul-based foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal covering technology and the coronavirus pandemic.

Mentorship areas include building and maintaining a beat, using data and public records in stories, and doing quick-turn enterprise reporting.

 

JILL KONOPKA has 23 years experience as a journalist at a dozen TV stations across the country, including, currently, as a freelance reporter at Boston 25 News. She works full time in Public Relations and Public Affairs in Albany, N.Y.

Mentorships areas include assignment reporting, investigative reporting, source building, covering a beat, public records.

 

LAURA KRANTZ is a subscriber-products editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. She formerly covered higher education for The Boston Globe, and she worked for VTDigger in Vermont and the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham.

Mentorship areas include beat coverage, enterprise stories, national reporting locally, career development, self-care, public records, and working with other news departments.

 

STEPH MACHADO is a Rhode Island-based reporter at The Boston Globe. She previously covered politics and the city of Providence for the WPRI Target 12 investigative team, holding government officials accountable.

Mentorship areas include public records and court documents, mastering a beat and developing sources, investigative storytelling for TV, and digital storytelling.

 

JUDY MEYER is executive editor for several Maine Trust for Local News publication, including the Sun Journal. She serves as vice president of the Maine Freedom of Information Coalition and is a member of the state’s Right to Know Advisory Committee.

Mentorship areas include public access help in Maine, general newsgathering strategy, newsroom management, maintaining work/life balance and project development.

 

KERRY MILLER worked as a journalist for 16 years. Among other roles, she served as reporter, community news editor, photographer and graphic designer for weekly and daily newspapers. Miller is now the Mobility Manager for the Nashua, N.H., public transit system.

Mentorship areas include news and feature writing, editing, New Hampshire city and state government, cultivating sources/community relationships, and public transportation.

 

MAGGIE MULVIHILL is an attorney, veteran investigative and data journalist, journalism educator at Boston University, news entrepreneur and an impassioned defender of the public’s right to know about government

Mentorship areas include data journalism skills, investigative reporting and public records work.

 

PENELOPE OVERTON has been a journalist for more than two decades, most recently at Maine’s largest newspaper, The Portland Press Herald. Overton covers the state’s $1.4 billion lobster industry as well as the growing recreational marijuana industry.

Mentorship areas include enterprise and investigative reporting, and beats such as environment, government, oceans/fisheries, cannabis and American Indian communities.

 

WALTER V. ROBINSON is Editor At Large at the Boston Globe. He is also the Edith Kinney Gaylord Visiting Professor in Investigative Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.

Mentorship areas include investigative reporting, political and national reporting, local news, editing and journalism ethics.

 

BARBARA ROESSNER is founding editor of The New Bedford Light. She formerly served as executive editor of Hearst Connecticut Media Group, an amalgam of daily and weekly newspapers, websites and other print and digital products based in Southern Connecticut.

Mentorship areas include enterprise reporting and editing, narrative writing, wedding words and visuals, covering national issues locally, and managing creative people.

 

KEVIN ROTHSTEIN is a Senior Producer with the investigative unit at WCVB-TV in Boston, specializing in covering criminal justice issues and vulnerable populations. Previously, he was a newspaper reporter at the Boston Herald, The Patriot Ledger and other publications.

Mentorship areas include investigative reporting while on daily deadlines, visual storytelling, reporting on vulnerable populations and digging deeper on daily stories.

 

MIKE STANTON is a professor at the University of Connecticut. He previously worked at The Providence Journal, where he was an award-winning investigative reporter specializing in public corruption, politics and government, and organized crime.

Mentorship areas include investigative reporting, political and beat reporting, narrative writing, interviewing and career planning.

 

TIFFANY TAN is a senior reporter with The Post and Courier in Columbia, S.C. She previously worked for VTDigger. She started her journalism career in the Philippines, before working for media organizations in China, Singapore and the United States.

Mentorship areas include enterprise reporting; covering police, courts and the opioid epidemic; public records; sourcing and reporting local news for a statewide audience.

 

CARLOS VIRGEN is a journalist with experience in audience engagement, data analysis, and multimedia production. He is the assistant managing editor for audience development at The Day in New London, Conn.

Mentorship areas include data journalism skills, audio production and audience engagement.

 

ADRIAN WALKER is a columnist for The Boston Globe’s Metro section. He provides commentary and opinion on local and regional news as well as society and culture. Walker started as a Metro columnist in 1998.

Mentorship areas include mining stories from beats, enterprise reporting and editing, and covering national stories locally.