CINCINNATI — Five investigative journalists will receive hands-on experience working at major media outlets as the new class of Roy W. Howard Fellows. The yearlong fellowships are supported by the Scripps Howard Fund.
The nonprofit newsrooms hosting the fellows during the program are: The Maine Monitor, Wisconsin Watch, The Baltimore Banner, Mississippi Today and Borderless Magazine.
The fellowships honor Roy W. Howard, former chairman of the Scripps Howard newspaper chain and a pioneering news reporter whose relentless pursuit of the news took him around the world, spurred innovation and helped lay the groundwork for modern journalism.
The fellowships, which are awarded biannually, are given to graduates of the Howard Centers for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland and Arizona State University. The Howard Centers were established in 2018. The Scripps Howard Fund is a public charity that supports causes important to The E.W. Scripps Company (NASDAQ: SSP) and the Scripps and Howard families.
The 2024-2025 Roy W. Howard Fellows:
Sapna Bansil
Bansil received her master’s degree in journalism in May from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Bansil worked as a data reporter for UMD’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, where she wrote stories and produced a video for an enterprise project on youth tackle football in collaboration with The Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism. She also covered the statehouse for Capital News Service. She worked as an intern for The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Before her career in journalism, Bansil worked for nearly 10 years as a pediatric occupational therapist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore. Bansil begins her fellowship at The Baltimore Banner in August.
Fatema Hosseini
Hosseini received her master’s degree in May from the University of Maryland. Since 2019, she has written for Kabul Now, USA Today and Capital News Service about gender discrimination in Afghanistan, immigration and policy issues, water contamination and the violation of veterans' rights in the U.S. She is researching terrorism in Afghanistan. Her recent investigation explored how ISIS-Khorasan was able to launch an attack in Moscow. Hosseini begins her fellowship at Borderless Magazine in September.
Steph Quinn
Quinn graduated in May 2024 with a master’s degree from the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. She reported on juvenile justice for Capital News Service and was chosen as a student leader on two projects at UMD’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, including a partnership with The Associated Press on “Lethal Restraint.” With a Ph.D. in history, she brings to her reporting a decade of experience researching how migrant laborers and women shaped urban life in Namibia during apartheid. After earning her doctorate from Stanford University in 2019, Quinn held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of the Free State in South Africa, where she lived for more than three years. She will begin her fellowship at Mississippi Today in September.
Khushboo Rathore
Rathore graduated from the University of Maryland in May with dual bachelor’s degrees in journalism and information science. Rathore specializes in gathering inaccessible data and creating visualizations and websites to show information. She has worked on projects with The Associated Press, the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, Local News Network and The Frederick News-Post. Rathore began her fellowship at Wisconsin Watch in July.
Adrienne Washington
Washington is an Editor & Publisher EPPY award-winning investigative journalist with a Master of Arts in investigative journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Washington holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism with a minor in diversity studies from the University of Washington, where she was awarded the Pioneer News Group Community Journalism award for her work covering income, gender and language barriers in the Seattle area. Her work has been featured in The Associated Press, The Seattle Times, Los Angeles Times, ABC News and Cronkite News, as well as in local reporting outlets in the Puget Sound and the metro Phoenix area. She began her yearlong Roy W. Howard Fellowship with The Maine Monitor in July.
Media contact: Molly Miossi, The E.W. Scripps Company, 513-977-3713, molly.miossi@scripps.com
About the Scripps Howard Fund
The Scripps Howard Fund , a public charity established by The E.W. Scripps Company (NASDAQ: SSP), is dedicated to creating informed and engaged communities through journalism education, childhood literacy and local causes. At the crossroads of the classroom and the newsroom, the Fund is a leader in supporting journalism through award-winning journalism education programs; scholarships, internships and fellowships; funding to advance diversity and inclusion; and support of First Amendment causes. The Scripps Howard Awards stand as one of the industry’s top honors for outstanding journalism. The Fund’s annual “If You Give a Child a Book …” childhood literacy campaign has distributed thousands of new books to children in need across the nation. The Fund partners with Scripps brands to create awareness of local issues and support organizations that build thriving communities. The Scripps Howard Fund administers funding for the Scripps Howard Foundation, a private foundation established in 1962 to advance charitable causes important to The E.W. Scripps Company and the Scripps and Howard families.