Announcing the 2023–24 O’Brien Fellows, students

Journalists will report for nine months on issues around justice and water, community resistance to displacement caused by gentrification, tech and public policy, and housing solutions.

By Vanessa Rivera and Ziyang Fu

Four journalists will join the Perry and Alicia O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism in August 2023, the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication at Marquette University announced today.

The incoming Fellows for the 2023–24 academic year are:

• Pamela K. Johnson, independent reporter, author and filmmaker from Long Beach, CA.
• Linda Lutton, independent reporter experienced in education and neighborhood coverage in Chicago, IL.
• Lindsay Muscato, independent reporter and editor based in Brooklyn, NY.
• Angela Peterson, photo editor, photojournalist and videographer at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Since 2013, the O’Brien Fellowship has helped professional journalists and Marquette student interns produce in-depth public service journalism projects for the Fellows’ home news organizations or other outlets. This program was the result of an $8.3 million gift from Peter and Patricia Frechette in honor of Patricia’s parents, Marquette alumni Perry and Alicia O’Brien. In 2021, the Fellowship received an additional $5 million from the Frechette Family Foundation to expand the program’s reach. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel co-founded the Fellowship.

The Fellowship seeks projects aimed at exposing injustice, uncovering potential solutions and igniting change. Journalists propose the topics.

“We can’t wait for this dynamic group of journalists and their student teams to dive into projects that will examine the roots of serious problems and what is being done to solve them,” said Dave Umhoefer, O’Brien Fellowship director.

Fellows receive a $75,000 salary stipend, assistance from Marquette journalism students and access to funds for reporting travel and research. Sponsoring news organizations get an in-depth reporting project and a summer intern following the Fellowship.

Pamela K. Johnson

Johnson is a multimedia journalist and 2nd vice president of the National Writers Union. She’s a former editor at Essence magazine and has had op-eds published in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. She was a fellow in the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, and has shot short films in Cape Town, South Africa; Dakar, Senegal; and Beijing, China. Johnson’s first short, “Talk Me To Death,” was a narrative project produced through New Mexico’s Digital Film Institute, and it won editing and audience awards. She is the co-author of two books, including “Santa and Pete,” which was made into a CBS TV movie starring James Earl Jones, Hume Cronyn and Flex Alexander. She is currently putting the finishing touches on a historical novel and was selected in 2022 as a Professional Artist Fellow by the Arts Council for Long Beach. She earned her bachelor’s degree in communication from Stanford University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.

Her project explores issues around justice and water. Senior journalism student Sarah Richardson and first-year graduate student Hannah Hernandez will assist Johnson on her O’Brien project.

Linda Lutton

Lutton’s work often centers everyday people. She worked for 14 years at WBEZ-Chicago, where her reporting and storytelling won national acclaim. Her education reporting examined Chicago’s dropout crisis, school segregation and youth violence. She covered the historic teachers strike of 2012 and the closing of 50 Chicago public schools. More recently, Lutton covered Chicago neighborhoods, writing about people, places, problems and possibilities across the city’s hundreds of unique communities. Lutton previously covered education in Chicago’s south suburbs for the Daily Southtown, and has worked as a freelance reporter in Michoacán, Mexico. Honors include a 2013 Peabody Award for her work on “This American Life” for its “Harper High School” episodes, and a Studs Terkel Award for reporting on Chicago’s diverse communities. Lutton graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with bachelor’s degrees in English and urban studies.

Her topic is on community resistance to displacement caused by gentrification. Senior journalism students Hope Moses and Kevin Fitzpatrick will assist Lutton on her O’Brien project.

Lindsay Muscato

Muscato is a journalist who focuses on technology and its influence over people’s lives. Most recently, she was a senior editor at TIME, working with a team to cover Big Tech, cryptocurrency, tech policy and more. Before that, she was an editor at MIT Technology Review, covering the COVID-19 pandemic — and the many ways that scientists and technologists raced to help. There, she was also a producer for a Webby-nominated investigative podcast about the pandemic’s origins. She has also researched and fact-checked for major nonfiction books on the tech industry and its evolution. She has worked as a researcher and producer on documentary films about climate change. In 2011, she served as a Leadership Resident with the Harpswell Foundation in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She is a graduate of Northwestern University’s journalism program and an alum of the AmeriCorps national service program.

Her topic involves tech and public policy. Senior journalism students Julia Abuzzahab and Grace Cady will assist Muscato on her O’Brien project.

Angela Peterson

Peterson is a photo editor, photojournalist and videographer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She worked on the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winning project, “One in a Billion,” about the quest to cure a sick young boy by mapping his DNA. Her work includes “Life Correction: The Marlin Dixon Story,” for which she followed a newly released inmate for two years, and “A New Prescription,” which revealed how social conditions can affect health more than medical care. Peterson’s visuals illustrated “Cycles of Violence,” a series on delayed justice after homicides in Milwaukee, and the “Lessons Lost” project, which focused on the causes and consequences of student churn in urban schools. In “Cultivating a Community,” she helped examine a unique urban gardening program for African American boys affected by trauma. Before coming to Milwaukee in 2003, Peterson worked at the Orlando Sentinel as a photo editor and photojournalist with an emphasis on minority community reporting. She is a native of Washington, D.C., and graduated from Syracuse University with a bachelor’s degree in communication.

Her topic examines housing solutions. Senior journalism students Isabel Bonebrake and Megan Woolard will assist Peterson on her O’Brien project.

The current class of O’Brien Fellows includes independent journalists Samantha Shapiro, Lauren Lindstrom and Lee Hawkins, and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter John Diedrich.