The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting is launching a summer program to help students from historically Black colleges and universities strengthen their portfolios by producing work that incorporates skills associated with data journalism.
Six students and recent graduates have been chosen as Ida B. Wells HBCU Data Journalism Fellows, who will come to Atlanta for 11 weeks of hands-on training and newsroom experience in a collaborative effort between the Society and the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Fellows will be assigned to work with AJC’s UATL, which explores news, trends and events shaping Black culture in Atlanta, and investigative data teams following up and building on the news organization’s extensive coverage of HBCUs.
The Society is branding the effort as a pilot project for establishing an accountability journalism institute to assist HBCU journalism programs, which often lack endowed professorships and campus-based centers that expose students to high-level investigative and data journalism practices.
“We want to be an added resource that helps push more students forward,” said Robbie Morganfield, the Society’s executive director. He noted that the Society received funding from the Jordan Foundation to support expanding narratives about Black life in America by working with high school and college students.
Based at Morehouse College in Atlanta, the Society offers a range of training to student and professional journalists. As part of its outreach to students, it is currently exposing journalism classes at two high schools to investigative reporting practices. Since 2021, it has offered a summer investigative reporting internship that draws hundreds of applications annually from college students and recent graduates across the nation. This summer, 16 interns will complete 10- to 12-week internships in professional newsrooms.
Morganfield hopes the HBCU initiative will help more HBCU students successfully compete for internships and entry-level jobs.
“Exposure and practice are the key,” he said. “And that is what this summer will be about. We are excited to see where it ultimately will lead us.”
The initial fellows, chosen from the pool of internship applicants not selected as finalists by newsrooms, hail from five campuses and have presented story ideas they hope to work on this summer. Trainers will help fellows fine-tune their ideas and coach them throughout the summer.
Here are the 2026 Ida B. Wells HBCU Data Journalism Fellows:
Yacine Ba is a rising senior at Howard University, majoring in journalism. This spring, she interned with WHUT-TV, Howard University’s television station. Previously, she served as co-executive director of live streaming for Spotlight Network and producer for The HillTalks podcast. She is passionate about international reporting, investigative journalism, and storytelling across print, digital, and broadcast platforms, including podcasting.
Chris Frazier is a recent Summa Cum Laude graduate of North Carolina Central University’s Mass Communication Department. He served as co-editor-in-chief of the Campus Echo student newspaper for two years, supervising more than 20 students who published four-five stories weekly. He also served as the Campus Echo’s opinions editor and a freelance contributor to the Carolina Forward newspaper. He participated in the Center for Journalism and Democracy’s DuBois Data Lab, the Bloomberg News Journalism Program, and the Ed Bradley Fellowship at New York University. After graduating, he began serving as an AmeriCorps Vista and Data Strategist for the City of Durham. He aspires to become a full-time investigative reporter who covers race and equity before eventually becoming a college journalism professor.
Antonio Mattox Jr. is a rising senior multimedia journalism student at North Carolina A&T State University. He’s the senior editor and sport section editor for the campus newspaper, The A&T Register. He is a member and officer of A&T’s chapter of the Associated Sports Press Editors and a consistent contributor to the department’s student news broadcast known as “Aggie News.”
He spent the summer of 2024 covering a basketball league in the Metro Atlanta area, where he graduated from high school. He recorded and edited packages and conducted player and coach post-game interviews. After graduating from A&T, he hopes to return to the region and become a sports reporter.
Kevin Pernell is a rising senior Journalism and Mass Communication major at North Carolina A&T State University. He serves on the social media team for the campus newspaper, The A&T Register, and as the social media chair for Men on the Move, where he is charged with creating engaging digital content to strengthen student outreach through storytelling and media. He spent summer 2025 exploring the Gullah Geechee culture through oral histories, cultural travel, photography, and writing. He visited various locations along the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, documenting stories about experiences of underrepresented voices. He aspires to become a journalist focused on issues impacting underrepresented communities, particularly in education, politics, and social justice.
Shimei Ricks-Cook recently graduated from Fayetteville State University, where he served as anchor and executive producer of his talk show, “What’s Hot with Shimei Cook,” and host of Historically Black Since News. Hailing from Bloomfield, Conn., he built a reputation for community-centered storytelling rooted in HBCU culture and identity. His work spans television, podcast, and digital platforms, including internship experience at CBS17/WNCN in Raleigh and Florida Citrus Sports in Orlando. A member of the National Association of Black Journalists, he received the New York University Ed Bradley Journalism Fellowship and the Rick Bonnell Scholarship. He will attend NYU this fall to pursue a Master of Arts in Journalism. His professional goal is to become a sports or entertainment reporter.
Tierra Stone is a senior multimedia journalism major at Morgan State University. Since her sophomore year, she has reported for the campus newspaper, where she has led the Black Health Matters: Cancer on Campus series, examining how cancer affects students and the surrounding community. The series also explores how the healthcare system and access to quality care affect underserved communities. She has interned for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper, freelanced for The Catholic Review, and interned for Inside Climate News, a nonprofit digital newspaper that covers climate change, energy, and the environment worldwide. Most recently, she reported from Key West on the Henrietta Marie pilgrimage and dive expedition featuring the Underwater Adventure Seekers, the world’s oldest Black scuba diving organization. She hopes to obtain her master’s degree in journalism after graduation and work as a multimedia journalist in a nonprofit, non-partisan newsroom that focuses on human-centered stories that bring awareness to health and environmental issues.
