Diving into disaster: Anton Delgado '20 reports from the American West for News21

This is part of a series of articles highlighting Elon students as they gain experience participating in study abroad, internships and undergraduate research during the summer. Stay tuned for more posts featuring the experiences of Elon students in their own words. 

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Anton Delgado's summer has been filled with disasters. And that's just what he went out West looking for. 

A rising senior majoring in journalism and international & global studies, Delgado is spending the summer as a Carnegie-Knight News21 Fellow. Through the fellowship, Delgado has joined a group of 37 top journalism students from 19 universities in the U.S., Canada and Ireland to investigate how the federal government has handled natural disasters, both historically, and as they are happening. 

Headquartered at Arizona State University’s Cronkite School, News21 is one of the most prestigious student journalism internships in the country. It was established by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to provide a platform for college students to produce in-depth multimedia projects on a national scale. 

Delgado is the managing editor of Elon News Network, and he brings to the fellowship in the western U.S. extensive reporting experience that includes an internship during summer 2018 reporting from a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. 

"Being a News21 fellow has been a dream of mine since freshman year," Delgado says. "I wanted to spend my summer doing high-impact investigative journalism and there is no better place for that than News21."

Delgado will be offering guest posts on the university's Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts during the coming days, and readers are invited to follow his Twitter account and website as he shares his experiences this summer.

​Delgado arrived at his News21 to find at least one friendly face — Alex Simon '17, an Elon News Network alum who is now a graduate student at Arizona State working toward a master's degree in sports journalism and was selected as a News21 fellow. They are part of a team that will spend 10 weeks researching and compiling an in-depth multimedia project. 

So far, the News21 experience has been powerful for Delgado. He's been dispatched to cover wildfires in Northern California for two weeks, and upon his return, was sent to cover the Woodbury Fire in Arizona. "Since News21 focuses so much on reporting on the underreported, fellows have been able to build relationships with people from all walks of life that have been affected by natural disasters," he says. "There isn’t a single memory that stands out because shining a light on the underreported always stands out."

The program concludes on Aug. 2, but Delgado will be leaving a little early to attend the Asian American Journalists Association's national convention in Atlanta, becoming the first Elon student to do so. "I'm of course incredibly excited to see our work when it is published in late August, but I am most looking forward to taking all that I've learned at News21 back to the Elon News Network newsroom," he says.