The New York Times has named Mario Koran, an award-winning Wisconsin Watch investigative journalist, to its inaugural class of the Local Investigations Fellowship, a program that gives journalists the opportunity to produce signature investigative work focused on their state or region that will be published by The Times and made available for free for co-publication by local newsrooms. Koran’s project focuses on the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

Interested applicants can apply to the Local Investigations Fellowship here.

Former Wisconsin journalist Kate Franco has been named executive editor of The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, Arizona, where she has worked for the last 23 years, the newspaper announced Monday.

A native of the Milwaukee area, Franco earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from UW-Madison before serving as an editor at newspapers in La Crosse, Wis.; Winona, Minn., and Newport, R.I.

Hannah Coyle, who has worked as a reporter for the (Hudson) Star-Observer for nearly two years, has been named community news editor, according to an announcement published this week. Her first day in the new role, in which she will oversee news content both in print an online, was Feb. 27.

A native of Red Wing, Minn., Coyle attended Red Wing Senior High School and DePaul University, from which she earned a journalism degree in 2021. While attending college she interned with O’Rourke Media’s (Red Wing, Minn.) Republican Eagle. After graduating, she was charged with re-launching another O’Rourke property, the online River Falls Journal.