Introducing the 2025 MJ Bear Fellows

The Online News Association is excited to announce the 2025 MJ Bear Fellows—six journalists under age 30 who are pushing innovation in digital news. Honoring the legacy of founding ONA board member Mary Jane “MJ” Bear, the yearlong fellowship provides early-career journalists with practical support and connection to a highly-engaged network of industry leaders as they work on a digital project. The MJ Bear Committee shared, “Our 2025 MJ Bear fellows represent the cutting edge of digital journalism innovation, demonstrating remarkable skill, creativity, and leadership across local and global audiences. They maintain a steadfast commitment to ethical responsibility while approaching communities with thoughtfulness and empathy. Collectively, they embody journalism’s future — harnessing technological innovation to serve communities with greater accessibility, authenticity, and impact.”

Get to know the 2025 fellows:

• Alexi Cohan is a Digital Producer at GBH News. Alexi is the creator and lead producer of Politics IRL, a monthly digital video series highlighting the voices of Gen Z voters from across the political spectrum as they discuss topics like abortion, immigration and the economy.
• Bryce Cracknell is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Margin. Bryce’s work at The Margin focuses on environmental justice and uses a mix of investigative journalism, personal narratives and immersive data visualizations to amplify the voices and experiences of communities most impacted by environmental harm.
• Dana Chiueh is a News Innovation Engineer at The Minnesota Star Tribune. Dana’s project Tipbot is an LLM-powered tool that analyzes news tips for missing information or context and follows up with relevant, automated responses.
• Riddhi Setty is an investigative journalist with experience covering labor policy and AI-related disputes around intellectual property. Riddhi is currently working with the Chief Technology Officer at ITV Network to develop an AI-powered tool trained by investigative journalists to identify potential red flags in data that companies publicly release—including annual reports, SEC filings and 990 forms.
• Kevin Nsieyanji Tchokodeu is a doctoral researcher at Technische Universität (TU) Darmstadt and the Founder of Neuelt e.K., a Germany-based digital media company. Neuelt e.K. has launched two distributed newsrooms, Afrik-View and The Times of Cameroon, that publish reporting from over 30 African journalists. Kevin’s current project is exploring how to integrate AI to support this work ethically and responsibility.
• Ruben Nyanguila is a photojournalist and investigative reporter covering culture, climate change and education in villages of the Congo River basin. Ruben is working on a multimedia project investigating women-led artisanal production in rural regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo facing significant impacts from the climate crisis.

Fellows were selected from a competitive global pool of applicants. The selection committee also highlighted an honorable mention for independent journalist Leila Warah. Based in the occupied West Bank and reaching global audiences, Leila primarily reports through short-form video and is now looking to expand to longer-form videos for a deeper look at the complexities of the Palestinian experience.

MJ Bear Fellows receive:

• Complimentary registration and travel support to attend ONA’s annual conference. Fellows attend digital journalism’s largest event to learn about the latest trends and tools, network with industry leaders and peers and showcase their work.
• Three tailored coaching sessions. With fellows’ projects and high-demand skills in mind, ONA designs coaching sessions with industry leaders for the group. Past sessions have covered topics such as pitching projects, marketing in journalism and entrepreneurship.
• ONA membership, with three years’ dues paid in full.