News Creator Corps is excited to announce the inaugural class of the Rural Creator Fellowship. The fellowship is a five-week intensive program focused on tactical skills like fact-checking, sourcing, and interviewing—the same core training as our flagship Trusted Creator Fellowship, adapted for the distinct realities of serving rural communities.
NCC prioritizes creators who serve communities of color, LGBTQ communities, and local news deserts. Rural communities sit squarely in that last category—and often in all three. As local newspapers continue to close and newsrooms shrink, creators are increasingly the only sources of reliable information in rural areas. Investing in them is essential to ensuring these communities have the information they need to make decisions about their lives, their families, and their civic participation. When we analyzed our application data, rural creators named the lack of local news infrastructure, broadband gaps, and a general absence of accessible information as challenges in ways that our urban and suburban applicants did not. We launched this fellowship to meet that need directly.
The creators who applied for the rural fellowship look meaningfully different from our flagship fellowship applicants, and that’s exactly the point. Where our typical applicant is platform-native, building an audience on Instagram or TikTok, many of these applicants are outlet-native—running what are essentially small local news operations through newsletters, Substack, local websites, and YouTube. Their community isn’t defined by topic or identity the way a typical creator’s might be. It’s defined by place: a specific county, a tribal nation, a corridor, a single street. These are community-embedded reporters as much as they are creators.
The Rural Creator Fellowship is NCC’s third cohort and begins on July 13. News Creator Corps now has creators in 22 states.
Meet the class
Abiola Agoro
Texas
Abiola Agoro is an NAACP award-winning disruptor, educator, organizer, strategist, and visual artist with a focus on racial justice, history, mental health, and disability. Through her non-traditional approach, Abiola has been able to educate millions of people online. She also is a pet mom.
Focus Areas: Education, Fashion, History, Local Issues, Race
Amy Peterson
Iowa
Amy H. Peterson is the founder and editor of The E’ville Good, a bilingual community journalism organization serving northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota. She received the 2026 Next Challenge Trust Award for pioneering information infrastructure that allows people in the same zip code, speaking different languages, to build on the same civic foundation. A Poynter Institute and Catena Foundation Fellow, Peterson has spent 20 years reporting on rural communities — and is building the model she wishes had always existed there.
Focus Areas: Civic Engagement, Education, Health, Local Issues, Science
Carey Bunker
Vermont
Carey Bunker is an author, tech consultant, and part-time librarian helping to bring multimedia stories and news to her small Vermont community after its local newspaper shuttered operations in late 2025. With a group of fellow volunteers, she launched The Neshobe Current in February 2026, a solely online news source serving several small towns in the area. Her hope is to bring clear, concise news, information, and human-interest stories to the Current’s readers while keeping the community connected and engaged.
Focus Areas: Civic Engagement, Education, History, Local Issues, Technology
Courtney McGill
Georgia
Courtney McGill is a storyteller, digital creator, and founder of Black-Owned Brunswick, a platform dedicated to documenting and promoting Black-owned businesses, creatives, and culture across Coastal Georgia. Through her work, she shares local stories, highlights community history, and helps connect people with the people, places, and experiences that make the region unique.
Focus Areas: Food and Beverage, History, Local Issues, Music, Race
Deon Osborne
Oklahoma
Deon Osborne is an Oklahoma-based journalist and documentarian focused on investigative storytelling, racial equity, and community empowerment. A graduate of the University of Oklahoma, he is the founder and host of In Depth With Deon Podcast.
Focus Areas: Civic Engagement, History, LGBTQ Community, Local Issues, Race
Frederick Murphy
North Carolina
Frederick D. Murphy is an award-winning filmmaker, historian, licensed clinical mental health counselor, and founder of History Before Us, a multimedia platform dedicated to preserving overlooked stories across America. Through documentaries, digital content, speaking engagements, and his YouTube channel, he travels the country capturing local history, businesses, museums, historic sites, and community voices that deserve a larger audience. His work connects history, travel, culture, and preservation while inspiring audiences to explore new places, support local communities, and better understand the stories that shaped us.
Focus Areas: Civic Engagement, History, Local Issues, Race, Travel
Kristin Hugo
Wyoming
Kristin is a science journalist and content creator in rural Wyoming who focuses on science, nature, animals, and bones. After getting an MS in Science Journalism, Kristin moved around the country to write about science for National Geographic, PBS Newshour, Newsweek, Bay Nature Magazine, and more. Her book, “Carcass: On the Afterlives of Animal Bodies,” is available for pre-order and will be published by MIT Press in March of 2027.
Focus Areas: Science, Travel
Nessa Diosdado
Texas
Nessa Diosdado is a 26-year-old creator from rural East Texas, raised by Mexican immigrant parents. As a first generation college graduate, she earned her BA in Political Science, graduating a year early while navigating college as a teen mom during the pandemic. At age 15, she ran for city council in her hometown as the youngest candidate, the only woman, and the only Latina. Her content reflects her love of Mexican culture, fashion, and motherhood, and she is fluent in both English and Spanish.
Focus Areas: Local Issues, Music, National Politics, Pop Culture, Sports
Steven Kimmi
Kansas
Steven Kimmi is a travel and food creator based in Kansas, sharing stories about small towns, local restaurants, and road-trip-worthy destinations across the Midwest and beyond. He’s best known for his community-driven Best Burger in Kansas series and for showcasing the unique character of small towns that rarely receive attention from mainstream media. He aims to help his audience discover the beauty, history, and culture of places around them, no matter how small. Steven is an educator by day, serving as an Assistant Professor of Education at Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina, KS.
Focus Areas: Food and Beverage, History, Travel
Triston Black
Arizona
Triston Black is a citizen of the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona. Triston works with tribal and rural communities on voter education, civic engagement among Native youth, and empowering Native people to learn their Native language and culture.
Focus Areas: Civic Engagement, Education, Local Issues