LynNell Hancock has been a professor at Columbia Journalism School for 25 years, and editor of the BronxInk.org since it launched in 2009. Besides teaching reporting, writing, ethics and covering education, she directs the school’s Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship for education journalists and continues to write for various national publications. Hancock came to Columbia after years of writing for the Village Voice, the New York Daily News, and Newsweek Magazine, where she covered public schools, juvenile justice, and other child and family policy issues. All the good stuff. Even though she was born, raised and educated in the great state of Iowa, the Bronx is in her bones. She lived in the borough with her family for a dozen years, and helped open a racially integrated public elementary school in District 10. It still exists. Research for her book, Hands to Work about federal welfare reform, brought her back for five years of immersion reporting to the South Bronx. There’s no better place for a journalist to be.
Joanne Faryon is an investigative journalist and producer, and senior lecturer in discipline at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. She has reported in Canada and the U.S. for more than two decades. Faryon is also creator of the acclaimed podcast Room 20 and a special correspondent for the LA Times.