Report for America places reporter in The State newsroom

A new reporter will soon join The State newsroom as part of the Report for America program, a nationwide initiative within a nonprofit news organization called The GroundTruth Project.

Rebecca Liebson, part of The New York Times’ inaugural fellowship class and a graduate from Stony Brook University, will join The State in June and focus on livability and housing issues in the Midlands and the additional obstacles that COVID-19 recovery will bring. Liebson will join current reporter Isabella Cueto on a newly formed team looking at potential solutions for the challenges ahead.

Liebson wrote for the metro desk of The Times and worked for The Weekly, The Times’ first-ever television news series, helping to produce episodes about a Navy SEAL accused of war crimes and the culture of sexual harassment in the world of yoga. Cueto has been with The State since August 2018, covering Lexington County issues.

Report for America, which is supported in part by the Knight Foundation, is a highly competitive program which selects journalists to join its reporting corps. The reporters are then matched with local news organizations to assist in helping cover often-neglected topics significant to their communities.

The positions are partly paid for by RFA, which requires matching community funding. Last month, we asked our readers to support this effort, and the response was heartening. Thank you to those of you who gave; your donation will go directly to paying for the reporting position.

We still have to work to do, however. If you haven’t yet and would still like to support these efforts, individuals, organizations and businesses can make a tax-deductible donation directly to Report for America using the form found at bit.ly/39E3VKA.

Your subscriptions help, too. If you aren’t a subscriber, please consider supporting us in that way. We are currently offering a special monthly rate of 99 cents for the first two months.

We realize we are just one of many in our community in need of help during these unprecedented times. If you are able, I urge you also to consider giving to The One SC Fund, housed at the Central Carolina Community Foundation. Donations made to that fund go directly to help the state’s COVID-19 response. More information on that fund can be found at www.OneSCFund.org.