Six Months on the Community Reporting Beat
A youth advisory team profiled by community reporting fellow Amy Moore. Photo: Amy Moore
Last summer, KneeDeep Times launched a pilot Community Reporting Network with a grant from the CO2 Foundation.
“We’ve long reported stories interesting to insiders in the climate adaptation and environmental justice field, but we wanted to connect more with our neighbors and communities challenged by fires, floods and really bad weather,” says editor Ariel Rubissow Okamoto.
As part of the network, the magazine recruited four community college journalism students as reporting fellows for the fall 2025 semester. The students, Amy Moore from Santa Rosa Junior College, Tristan Moore and Gracebelle Ma’ake from Diablo Valley College, and Rain Hepting from Las Positas College, produced eight stories between September 2025 and January 2026 under the leadership of community editor Rose Garrett. Topics covered ranged from learning how to do a prescribed burn in Sonoma and detailing PFAS contamination in the Tri-Valley area to a profile of a Martinez resident battling bad air and a progress report on creating a pollinator garden in a Concord church yard. Formats ranged from text to photojournalism to comic.
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Noticias en español
Encuentra más historias en español esta primavera, dentro de nuestro boletín KneeDeep con vecinos, y aquí en nuestro sitio.
Los residentes de Rio Vista hablan sobre salud y calidad del aire
Una reunión de Solano Sostenible discutió cómo los pozos de gas y el tráfico afectan el aire local y la salud pública.
El Año Nuevo pone a los residentes de Concord en alerta ante posibles inundaciones
En Concord, las lluvias invernales y el riesgo de inundaciones están obligando a los residentes a prepararse con sacos de arena, cambios en sus desplazamientos diarios y vigilancia de los arroyos.
L-R: Tristan Moore, Rain Hepting, Amy Moore, Gracebelle Ma'ake.
“I’ve learned so much more about how to craft an article, especially a climate-related article. You guys have given me so many incredible resources … I feel like I have a way better understanding of what ‘climate resilience’ is now,” says fellow Tristan Moore.
“I like the local focus because it’s encouraged me to connect with and learn about environmental issues in my immediate area that I otherwise may not have had a reason to look into,” says fellow Rain Hepting.
In spring 2026, KneeDeep will work with three community reporting fellows from high schools in Fairfield and Newark.
This January, a new editorial team also rolled out a pilot version of the magazine’s newsletter called KneeDeep With Neighbors, which also publishes in Spanish as KneeDeep con vecinos. This will publish a few times this spring and connect with social media between times as an experiment.
Stay tuned for more reporting in Spanish, as well as more coverage of under covered community-based organizations, and more stories community storytellers.
Congrats to our first co-hort of community reporting fellows, and thank you for your contributions to the magazine.
