The Granite State News Collaborative recently welcomed two new journalists, Nour Habib and Jenny Whidden, to our ever-growing team. Nour and Jenny are experienced journalists in their fields and are valued members of our team.

The Collaborative was able to add these reporters to its staff because of national funding support from Solutions Journalism Network and Report For America, the latter pays for half the salary of a full time reporter in a host newsroom.

Collaborative reporters not only generate original reporting that can be distributed by its 20 media partners, but they also work directly with partner outlets to offer short-term reporting support on in-depth projects related to race and equity. Those stories are also shared with all Collaborative partners for publication.

Nour Habib joined the Collaborative this spring as the engagement reporter. In this role, she is working to make sure communities of color across the state are the driving force behind the Collaborative’s new race and equity reporting project. Her role will include organizing listening sessions with the public, engaging with audience members through social media and using feedback to directly inform reporting and writing stories that matter to communities of color in New Hampshire.

Habib is an experienced journalist who spent many years as a newspaper reporter in Oklahoma, including at the Tulsa World, where she did everything from covering education and suburban city government to writing movie reviews and lifestyles features.

Before joining the Collaborative, she also spent some time working in nonprofit communications in New Hampshire. She lives in Keene.

Jenny Whidden joined the Granite State News Collaborative this month through Report For America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Whidden will be responsible for providing much needed deep-dive coverage of underlying systems and issues relating to race and equity in our state and exploring the impacts that racial justice-related legislation has on our communities.

Previously, Whidden, of Rolling Meadows, Illinois, covered the Illinois Statehouse and the pandemic for the Chicago Tribune. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Marquette University, where she was managing editor of the Marquette Tribune, an award-winning student paper. Whidden has reported for New Jersey’s Star-Ledger, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service, a nonprofit site. The Associated Press and U.S. News & World Report have also published her work.

Jenny can be reached at Jenny.Whidden@collaborativenh.org; Nour can be reached at Nour.Habib@collaborativenh.org