Staff

Ted Alcorn, contributing reporter.

Ted Alcorn is an independent journalist raised in Albuquerque whose reporting on health and justice has appeared in various local and national publications. He was previously the founding research director of Everytown For Gun Safety and a policy analyst in the Office of the Mayor of New York City. He earned graduate degrees at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and their School for Advanced International Studies, and lived in Beijing, China as a Henry Luce scholar. 

For New Mexico In Depth, he has investigated an ignored epidemic of hepatitis C in the state’s prison system, not-for-profit hospitals’ shortfall of community benefit spending, and Albuquerque’s plans to launch an alternative branch of emergency response independent of the police. His 2022 reporting project for New Mexico In Depth is supported by the Association for Health Care Journalists and the USC Center for Health Journalism Impact Fund. Follow him @tedalcorn.

Bettina Baca, audience engagement specialist.

Bettina is currently a strategic communication student at the University of New Mexico. She previously served as a higher education administrator in Orlando, Florida. In her leisure time, Bettina indulges in collecting comic books and playing Dungeons and Dragons, often accompanied by her feline companion, Mumbles. She is the audience engagement specialist for New Mexico In Depth.

Marjorie Childress, managing editor. [email protected]

Marjorie is the managing editor for New Mexico In Depth.  As a reporter, she’s covered New Mexico social and political stories since 2008, beginning with the New Mexico Independent, the state’s first digital nonprofit news outlet. For New Mexico In Depth she periodically reports on public health, energy, environment and the influence of money in politics. As editor, she works with reporters to produce ongoing as well as special reporting projects, and she manages the organization’s fellowship program for emerging journalists. She holds a Master’s degree in community planning from the University of New Mexico, and over the course of her career has held management positions in both private and nonprofit organizations, leading financial management, strategic planning, and program teams.

Bella Davis, reporter. [email protected]

Bella Davis is an Indigenous affairs reporter at New Mexico In Depth, a position made possible in part by the national organization Report for America. She is Yurok and was born in Eureka, California but grew up in central New Mexico. She previously reported on cannabis, local government and other issues for the Santa Fe Reporter. Before that, she did a one-year reporting fellowship with New Mexico In Depth. Bella got her start in journalism at her college newspaper, which she joined at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the summer of 2020, she primarily covered protests spurred by the police murder of George Floyd. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of New Mexico. 

In 2024, Bella’s reporting on a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people is supported in part by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Fund for Indigenous Journalists: Reporting on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two Spirit and Transgender People (MMIWG2T).

Pamela Dempsey, development staff.

Pam Dempsey is the past executive director of Investigate Midwest and an online, print and radio journalist, who has developed community engagement programs, investigative reporting workshops and helped coordinate the start-up of two online newsrooms that heavily emphasize data journalism. She is also the program director of the Data-Driven Reporting Project based at Medill | Northwestern. 

Gwyneth Doland, contributing reporter. [email protected]

Gwyneth teaches media ethics and law, multimedia writing and other courses in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years, working in newspapers, magazines, on television, radio and online. She is a contributor to New Mexico in Depth and a correspondent for New Mexico PBS. Gwyneth was previously the executive director of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, and has served on the boards of the Journalism and Women Symposium and the Society of Professional Journalists, Rio Grande Chapter. Her report on government accountability for the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Her work has been honored with a First Amendment Award from ACLU-NM as well as awards from SPJ, the National Federation of Press Women, the Association for Alternative Newsweeklies, the International Regional Magazine Association and the New Mexico Broadcasters Association. She has a master’s degree from the Harvard Extension School with a concentration in journalism.

Bryant Furlow, investigative reporter. [email protected]

An Albuquerque-based investigative journalist focused on public health. A frequent contributor to The Lancet’s medical journal news desks, Bryant Furlow’s previous reporting has included investigative series on lax state regulation of the health insurance industry, drinking water quality, rural ambulance response times following EMS budget cuts, and the off-label sedation of jail inmates with prescription psychiatric drugs — a practice that led to a regional street trade, overdoses and deaths in northern N.M. In 2020 and 2022, he worked with New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica on several investigations as part of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

For New Mexico In Depth, he’s reported on an epidemic of teen suicide; a secret hospital policy that violated Native mothers’ patient rights and separated some from their newborns, reporting that sparked a federal investigation and ended the practice; extremely preterm newborn mortality at a prominent women’s hospital; and he produced award-winning coverage of COVID-19 responses at nursing homes and exposed the VA’s early COVID no-masks policy and a telework ban that put workers at risk. Within days of our first story, the VA reversed course.

Trip Jennings, executive director. [email protected]

Trip started his career in Georgia at his hometown newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle. Since then he’s worked at newspapers in California, Florida and Connecticut where he reported on many interesting stories, including the resignation and incarceration of Connecticut’s then-governor, John Rowland, and gang warfare in California. Since 2005, Trip has covered politics and state government for the Albuquerque Journal, The New Mexico Independent and the Santa Fe New Mexican.  He holds a Master’s of Divinity from Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. In 2012, he co-founded New Mexico In Depth.

Nicole Pelt, audience engagement specialist.

Nicole is a student at the University of New Mexico in the Native American Studies program, with a minor in the Navajo language. She has earned Photoshop certifications in versions CS6 and CC 2015, and works with digital media to create graphics. For New Mexico In Depth she works on range of audience engagement strategies. After finishing her Bachelors degree, Nicole plans to serve her community in any regard and hopes to work with Indigenous communities. Nicole has been an Albuquerque resident for most of her life, and has worked with Indigenous communities within the university setting. 

Heerea Kaur Rikhraj, reporter

Heerea is a recent graduate from the Columbia Journalism School and frequently covers race, health and trauma. From Canada, she previously produced the podcast “The Incomplete Truth”, exploring the importance of health equity for Indigenous populations in Manitoba. She has also reported stories from Israel and Palestine.