WEBINAR: Friday, September 19th at 9am PT / 12pm ET 

IIJ Presents 

Reporting from the Intersection: When Identity and Beat Collide

When personal identity and professional beat intersect, journalism gains powerful depth. This webinar features journalists who report on issues that directly impact communities they belong to, such as reporters who are trans covering trans rights or reporters who are immigrants reporting on immigration. 
This video is free to all 
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Key Takeaways

  • Strategies for freelance journalists reporting stories that directly impact their own communities with integrity, empathy, and rigor.
  • Tools to advocate for your stories, and for yourself. 
  • A frank conversation with experienced freelance journalists and editors on self care, setting boundaries, and knowing when to walk away. 

About this panel

  • Friday, September 19, 2025. 
  • 9am PT / 12pm ET
  • Virtual
  • 75 minutes
  • Free
  • Recorded 
When personal identity and professional beat intersect, journalism gains powerful depth. This webinar features journalists who report on issues that directly impact communities they belong to, such as reporters who are trans covering trans rights or reporters who are immigrants reporting on immigration. 
Join the Trans Journalists Association and the Institute for Independent Journalists in an honest conversation with reporters and editors who will share best practices for navigating these dual roles with integrity, empathy, and rigor. Learn how lived experience can inform reporting while upholding the highest standards of journalistic ethics and impact.

Who is this panel for? 

experience levels 
Meet the MODERATOR

Adam Rhodes 

training director for Investigative Reporters and Editors

Adam Rhodes is a first-generation Cuban American journalist whose work primarily focuses on queer people and the criminal justice system. Their recent work has examined HIV treatment access in Puerto Rico, HIV criminalization in Illinois, and a homophobic capital murder trial in the state. Rhodes was most recently a staff writer and social justice reporter at the Chicago Reader, and they have been published in outlets including BuzzFeed News, The Nation, them, and The Washington Post.
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Meet the panelist

Drew Costley

Assistant Managing Editor, Verite News

Drew Costley (she/they) is an award-winning journalists who runs Verite News' newsroom fellowship program and covers the LGBTQIA+ community, the environment, climate and health. They have previously worked at the Associated Press, SFGate, USA Today and ESPN the Magazine and graduated from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism in 2019.
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Meet the panelist

Annabel Rocha

Freelance Journalist

Annabel Rocha is a Latinx freelance journalist based in Chicago. She previously served as reproductive justice reporter at Reckon, where she focused on storytelling that emphasized how Black and Brown individuals experience pregnancy and reproductive health in the post-Roe U.S. landscape. Rocha is a former fellow of City Bureau, the Center for Health Journalism, and the Journalism & Women Symposium. You can keep up with her work on Twitter/X @annabelrocha93
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Meet the panelist

Denny Agassi

writer, journalist, filmmaker and musician

Denny is a writer, actor, and musician who co-starred in POSE (FX), New Amsterdam (NBC) and City On Fire (Apple TV). She was formerly the LGBTQ+ communities reporter at Reckon, focusing on rampant anti-trans legislation in the midst of right-wing rhetoric. She has written for The Grammy, Allure, The Emancipator, Autostraddle, Mother Jones and more. She is working on a screen adaptation inspired by her 2021 essay "He Made Affection Feel Simple" published in The New York Times’ Modern Love column, a debut single and a speculative nonfiction book.
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Meet the PRESENTER

Ruxandra Guidi

Ruxandra Guidi has been telling stories for more than two decades. Her reporting and writing for public radio, podcasts and magazines has taken her throughout the United States, the Caribbean, South and Central America, and the U.S.-Mexico border region. 

After earning a Master’s degree in journalism from U.C. Berkeley in 2002, she assisted independent producers The Kitchen Sisters with their award-winning series Lost & Found Sound. She went on to work as a reporter, editor, and producer for Latino USA, The World, Fronteras Desk in San Diego-Tijuana, and KPCC Public Radio in Los Angeles. She was a freelance foreign correspondent based in Bolivia (2007-2009) and in Ecuador (2014-2016). Currently, she is an independent editor and contributor to various podcasts and magazines, and finishing her first novel. In 2023, Ruxandra won a Soros Equality Fellowship to produce the anthology podcast Happy Forgetting about racial justice in America.
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Meet the Panelist

Katherine Reynolds Lewis

founder of the Institute for Independent Journalists

Katherine Reynolds Lewis is an award-winning science journalist and author covering children, education, race, gender, disability, mental health, and social justice. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Bloomberg Businessweek, Elemental, Experience Life, Fortune, New York Times, Parade, Parents, Slate, USA Today, and Washington Post, among others. Her book on children’s behavioral and mental health, The Good News About Bad Behavior: Why Kids Are Less Disciplined Than Ever – And What to Do About It, grew out of the most-read story Mother Jones has ever published. Katherine has been an adjunct journalism professor at American University and Northwestern University, and served as a guest lecturer in journalism at AU, Marquette University, Northwestern, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Southern California.
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Trans Journalists Association

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The Institute for Independent Journalists

The Institute for Independent Journalists is an education, professional development, and mutual support organization for independent journalists, focusing on Black, Indigenous and people of color. Our mission is financial and emotional sustainability for independent journalists of color, through community learning, innovation and advocacy.

Our mission is to ensure financial and emotional sustainability for independent journalists of color, by:

Connecting freelancers for learning, collaboration and mutual support in a space that centers marginalized voices and facilitates authenticity and vulnerability.

Creating tools, services and shared wisdom for economic self-sufficiency and mental health, regardless of churn in journalism or who controls newsrooms. 

Advocating for fair and equitable treatment of freelancers and best practices for ethical use of independent labor, throughout the media.
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