Member Education Sessions: Indigenous Journalism

Jourdan Bennett-Begaye is the executive editor of ICT. She is the first woman to be the chief news executive and top editor of the 40-year-old newspaper and website. She's also vice president of and in her fourth year as a board member of the Indigenous Journalists Association (formerly the Native American Journalists Association). 

She is a Diné citizen of the Navajo Nation. She identifies as the Towering House Clan, the Coyote Pass Clan of Jemez, the Mexican Clan, and the Hopi with Red Running Into the Water Clan. 

Since her hire with ICT in 2018, Jourdan has reported stories on health, education, public health, 2020 Census, policy, politics, and more. She has focused on the COVID-19 pandemic coverage, especially COVID-19 data, in Indian Country. 

She has won multiple awards for her reporting in digital and broadcast, such as the ICT Newscast for her contribution to the COVID report and for her COVID-19 data beat reporting. She is part of the Indigenous Investigative Collective, a project by IJA focused on investigations in Indigenous communities. In 2022, she and the collective won the Richard LaCourse Award, an investigative journalism award, for their work on COVID-19 deaths in Indian Country.

Jourdan received her master's degree in magazine, newspaper, and online journalism through the Newhouse Minorities Fellowship at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in New York. Her health background is rooted in her bachelor's degree in athletic training from Fort Lewis College and the University of Michigan Future Public Health Leaders Program via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Her experience working with Native youth led to teaching at Upward Bound in Colorado and high school journalism, video production, and theater in her home state. While in New Mexico, Jourdan co-founded the Survival of the First Voices, an art and media organization for Native youth. She is the co-director of IJA’s Indigenous Journalism Fellowship and has contributed to NPR’s NextGen Radio Project. 

She’s written for Native Peoples Magazine, Fan First, MediaShift, The Daily Times, NAJA’s Native Voices News, NPR’s NextGen Radio Project, and Syracuse.com/The Post-Standard.

Bryan is the grant operations manager for The Associated Press, where he manages the company’s growing philanthropic portfolio.

Bryan is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and the former executive editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Native American newspaper published in 1828. He serves on the board of directors for High Country News, where he has been an editor and consultant for the Indigenous Affairs desk. He is the former associate director and president of the Native American Journalists Association (now Indigenous Journalists Association), where he developed programs to empower Indigenous voices in journalism and promote fair representations of Native people in mainstream media. 

He continued this work as a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University, where he studied solutions to enhance Indigenous press freedom. He recently completed his master’s in journalism and has published his thesis, “A Native American Free Press: The Opportunities and Threats to Press Freedom in Indian Country.”

Bryan, born in Oklahoma, is based in Monterey, California.

Francine Compton joins IJA from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, where she served as a producer for CBC Indigenous in Winnipeg. Before CBC, Compton served as executive producer for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, APTN National News for Eastern Canada, and the network’s political show Nation to Nation. 

She joined APTN full-time in February 2000 as an assistant director. In 2008, she shifted to the editorial side of APTN’s newsroom and soon found herself in a position to form the network's first investigative unit. She served as a producer and then executive producer of APTN Investigates for nearly 7 years.

Bobby “Trae” Trousdale (he/him), a proud citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, is a descendent of the Toupin family and was raised in Tecumseh, Oklahoma. Before joining NAP, Bobby “Trae” worked in student programming, advancement, and leadership within higher education. He also brings experience from the private sector in event planning, employee engagement, and executive operations.

Bobby “Trae” received a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Oklahoma City University. He holds an M.P.A. specializing in nonprofit administration and a graduate certificate in Native American Studies from the University of Oklahoma. His areas of research focused on issues of organizational diversity, community development, and Indigenous strategic planning.

In his free time, Bobby “Trae” volunteers with several local organizations including Sisu Youth Services, both Oklahoma City Pride organizations, and serves on the Board of Directors for the ACLU of Oklahoma. He also enjoys stickball, pickleball, antiquing, and exploring Oklahoma City’s local breweries with his spouse.. He is married to his college sweetheart, Taylor. Together they live on the Southside of OKC and have a dog and a cat, respectively named Timothy Gunnderson (à la Project Runway’s Tim Gunn) and Tamale.