The Allbritton Journalism Institute (AJI) announced today the addition of three accomplished journalists: Oriana González, Evan McMorris-Santoro, and Maggie Severns.
Oriana, Evan, and Maggie bring their reporting experience and expertise to help lead AJI’s newsroom where they will write and report for the institute’s non-profit publication set to launch this Fall, as well as play integral roles as mentors at AJI, working closely with this year’s class of fellows.
AJI is backed by a $20 million grant from Robert Allbritton, the founding publisher of POLITICO. The new non-profit organization and newsroom, staffed by a group of veteran journalists, will train aspiring reporters to produce fact-based, non-partisan journalism on government and politics.
Oriana comes to AJI from Axios, where she led and shaped the newsroom’s coverage of abortion. Her deeply sourced scoops and incisive reporting made Axios a must-read in the lead up to and the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. She was a frequent contributor to the Axios Today podcast and has appeared on Sirius XM, Scripps News, Telemundo, and MSNBC.
Evan is a veteran print, audio, and television reporter. He was on the front lines of America’s tumultuous pandemic years as an enterprise correspondent at CNN, airing stories about the challenges in education, the racial justice movement, and the changing tenor of politics. As a political correspondent at Vice News, he won an Emmy for coverage of the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Maggie is an award-winning enterprise and investigative journalist who writes about money, power, and politics. She has spent more than a decade exposing the behind-the-scenes forces that shape politics as a reporter for POLITICO, the news startup Grid, and most recently The Messenger, where she covered the legal probes into Donald Trump. She’s investigated and reported on major news events including the 2020 election, the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and Jerry Falwell Jr.’s fall at Liberty University.
Professional journalists interested in working with AJI should contact Tim Grieve at tim@aji.org. Individuals and institutions who wish to support the Institute’s work should contact Rachel Hirschberg at rachel@bhstrategiesllc.com. The Allbritton Journalism Institute is a Virginia nonstock corporation and has an application pending for tax-exempt status under Internal Revenue Code 501(c) (3).
The Allbritton Journalism Institute does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, marital status or military status in its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship or grant programs, other school-administered programs, employment, recruitment, compensation, or any of its other activities or operations. AJI admits students of any race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, marital status or military status to all the rights, privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school.