Kristine Villanueva is a journalist, editor, and educator passionate about harnessing people-powered media to reinforce and expand community-based information networks. She is currently a community moderator at The New York Times and an engagement producer at Catchlight.
As a reporter, she covers a range of beats, including labor rights, social justice movements, media, and food culture. She has written for publications such as The Guardian, Mother Jones, and the Center for Public Integrity and for local outlets such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine, and Philadelphia’s NPR affiliate, WHYY. She also covers Filipino diasporic issues for Philippines-based outlet, Altermidya.
She previously worked for news organizations such as ProPublica, Resolve Philly, POLITICO, and The Center for Public Integrity. She graduated in 2017 with her master’s in engaged journalism at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she taught for four years. She now teaches journalism at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Community College of Philadelphia.
Her experience in engagement journalism also includes leading digital, social media, newsletter, and SMS texting strategies to reach disenfranchised communities. She has also led nationwide crowdsourced, collaborative investigations as well as oral history and community archiving projects. In her off hours, she likes to paint zines, go to punk shows, and cuddle her cat, Perseus (aka Percy).
Selected bylines
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For The Guardian
In the center of the suburban town of Robbinsville, New Jersey, sits the largest modern Hindu mandir outside India.
What visitors from around the world see is a breathtaking display of craftsmanship – hand-carved stone from Rajasthan assembled across a sprawling 185-acre complex. The temple has gone viral on social media for its intricate designs, which took millions of hours to complete. Baps Swaminarayan Akshardham, the religious organization behind the site, has built similar temples across the globe. But some workers say these monumental structures came at a high cost.
Beneath the beauty and sheer scale of the Robbinsville complex lies a darker story: allegations of worker abuse, visa fraud and medical neglect during the temple’s construction between 2015 and 2023. Workers believe that at least two laborers, Ramesh Meena and Devi Lal died from a largely preventable, irreversible lung disease called silicosis, caused by inhaling fine silica dust produced while carving stone, according to court documents and labor advocates familiar with the case. Lal died while waiting for a lung transplant.
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For Breakthrough News
Every year, tens of millions of people descend on Philadelphia to walk the streets that helped launch a nation. Philadelphia is a city of “firsts” and “oldests” from the cobblestone streets of Elfreth’s Alley, to the first lending library and first public hospital.
The region drew a record-breaking 46 million visitors in 2019 alone to take in the historic sights — and is expected to host even more tourists for America’s 250th anniversary next year. But while some residents and visitors focus on festivities, workers who remain the backbone of the city’s tourism industry, are stepping out from behind the scenes with their own demands.
“When I first started, we were like a well oiled machine,” said Monica Berks, who has worked at the Wyndham Hotel in Center City, Philadelphia, as a restaurant server, bartender and in banquets for seventeen years. “Now everyone is stressed out. You’re doing your job and someone else’s job that’s not there.”
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For the Objective
As newsroom infrastructures shift and diversity, equity, and inclusion rollbacks strip institutions of resources — especially under this current presidential administration — journalists have an opportunity to turn to the same questions archivists have been wrestling with about long-term preservation and ethical stewardship of memory.
Archives have historically mirrored journalism’s top-down approach, and many archivists, like journalists, are calling into question how traditional and systemic methods contribute to the marginalization of the very people they aim to serve. Methods practiced by those stewarding participatory and community archives can serve as a blueprint for a new journalistic approach.
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For Altermidya - Philippines-based outlet
Washington D.C. – Over 100 Filipino-American activists staged protests outside the White House in Washington D.C. against the recent trilateral meeting between Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., US President Joe Biden, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The protests, led by BAYAN USA, were mounted concurrently in cities including Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu, to denounce what the activists describe as President Biden’s detrimental “ironclad alliance” with the Philippines.
The activists argue that Biden’s so-called alliance with the Philippines is playing a significant role in the latter’s worsening economic crisis, heightened foreign military presence, and ongoing climate issues.
Recent Projects:
People’s Handbook for Diaspora Reporting
A long-term, interdisciplinary crowdsourced guidebook on best practices in covering diaspora communities in the U.S. utilizing a newsletter to crowdsource questions, suggestions, share the process, critiques, and ideas. Crowdsourcing through forms, community calls, and building this guide over time helps ensure that standards are responsive to the needs of the industry, are constantly evolving, and are open to critique and discussion. Partner organizations include The Objective and Open News.
Phillypino Oral
History Project
The Phillypino Oral History Project is a community-based oral history and photography project capturing the rich narratives of Filipino immigrants who have lived in Philadelphia for at least ten years. The project focuses on memory work that delves into participants’ experiences during martial law, the implementation of labor export policy, the People Power Revolution, and more. As the project lead, I conducted interviews, developed the exhibition guide and exhibit copy, trained community participants in trauma-informed reporting techniques, and co-curated an exhibit at the Free Library of Philadelphia’s central branch. See the digital exhibition guide here.
News Ambassadors
News Ambassadors is a program that strengthens local news through solutions journalism, community engagement, and collaboration to reduce polarization and uplift common ground. Comprised of several local news collaboratives nationwide, students fill local news gaps by learning solutions journalism, community-engaged reporting techniques, and how to collaborate with local newsrooms and community organizations to maximize impact. Students also have the opportunity to be paired with counterparts in demographically dissimilar areas to expand their scope of learning. See the News Ambassadors newsletter and Instagram.