Hi there - good to meet you!
I am a journalist and documentary producer based in Tucson, Arizona. I see journalism as a tool to understand and change the world around me with the tools of language and connection.
Right now, I cover community resilience for Arizona Luminaria, a nonprofit newsroom covering Southern Arizona. My reporting looks at the way local communities deal with systemic issues, from efforts to change the lack of regulation around evictions in mobile home parks to how Tucson’s homeless population lives day to day.
In the past I have been an education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago and The Arizona Republic, a special projects editor for Migratory Notes newsletter, overseen a team of reporters as an editor at The Moscow Times and served as board president of Borderless magazine.
I’ve produced feature-length documentaries and a pop culture web series for Scrappers Film Group; worked as a fellow with City Bureau, where I won a March 2016 Sidney Hillman award for an investigation into the Chicago police union's misinformation about fatal police shootings; and covered race and poverty issues for the Chicago Reporter.
My freelance journalism has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, Pacific Standard and Chicago magazine among others.
I received an MSJ from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.
You can find me on Twitter @yanazure or reach me by email at yanakunichoff@gmail.com.