Baltimore Sun Media announces reporters, editors joining The Sun, community newsrooms

Baltimore Sun Media is announcing several reporters who will join The Sun and its community newsroom staff.

Dan Belson joined the Capital Gazette on Monday and will focus on crime and courts coverage in Anne Arundel County. Before joining Baltimore Sun Media in 2022, Dan was the editor of The Dundalk Eagle and had previously worked multiple beats at Southern Maryland News. He was raised in Millersville, and graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Giacomo “Jack” Bologna joined The Baltimore Sun’s business and health team on Monday to cover development, real estate and health care, including the state’s budding marijuana industry. Jack comes from the Baltimore Business Journal, where he’s covered technology and health care. He came to Baltimore last year from Jackson, Mississippi, where he was an investigative reporter for the Clarion Ledger.

Before that he was a county, crime and courts reporter for the Springfield News-Leader in Illinois. A native Michiganer, Jack graduated the University of Michigan in 2014 and loves the outdoors, even spending last winter volunteering in the backcountry officer of Crater Lake national Park in Oregon.

Hayes Gardner is joining The Baltimore Sun March 21 as an enterprise reporter, with a particular focus on the intersection of sports, news and culture. Hayes comes to us from the Louisville Courier Journal, where he primarily wrote sports features until pivoting in June 2020 to cover the protests over Breonna Taylor’s killing full time. He was part of the team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

Before working in Louisville, Hayes covered Iowa State sports for The Ames Tribune and freelanced for The Oregonian. He graduated from Grinnell College and spent two years post-graduation as an AmeriCorps member.

Ngan Ho is joining The Baltimore Sun March 21 as an emerging news reporter. Ngan comes to Baltimore from The York Dispatch, where she covered breaking news and helmed the paper’s morning newsletter. Before that, she worked as a general assignment reporter for an online news startup, the Owensboro Times in Kentucky, and spent three years as a courthouse reporter at the San Angelo Standard Times in Texas. Ngan has a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and has produced award-winning video packages. She’s excited to be making her way to the East Coast.

Kendyl Kearly joined The Baltimore Sun as an emerging news content editor on Monday. Kendyl comes to us from New York City, where she has been working as a freelance journalist. She has been an editor at the StarChefs food publishing company and at Modern Luxury, serving as the organization’s managing editor as well as the executive editor of Manhattan magazine. Kendyl is a graduate of the University of Missouri. She loves to cook, especially fresh pasta, and is looking forward to enjoying plenty of crab -- so send restaurant recommendations her way.

Andy Kostka will join The Sun March 21 as an Orioles and general assignment reporter. He comes to us from the Clarion Ledger, where he covered Mississippi State athletics, with a primary focus on football, basketball and baseball. Andy graduated from the University of Maryland in 2020, where he worked as the sports editor for The Diamondback, the independent student newspaper. He also held internships at USA TODAY, the Washington Times and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette during college. Andy is a native of Montgomery County, listens to indie rock and is an unabashed West Ham fan.

Sabrina LeBoeuf will join The Baltimore Sun March 21 covering education. Sabrina joins us from The News-Star, a regional newspaper owned by Gannett in Northeast Louisiana, where she covered children’s issues and growth and development. Prior to that she was an intern at the Austin American-Statesman.

A 2021 graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Sabrina describes herself as Cajun-Panamanian and is fluent in Spanish. Fun fact: As her Twitter (@_sabrinakaye) bio notes, she is named after the remake of the movie “Sabrina,” starring Julia Ormond, not the original starring Audrey Hepburn.

Tony Roberts joined Baltimore Sun Media on Feb. 7 covering Baltimore and Harford counties. He is a 2021 graduate from North Carolina A&T State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication. Most recently, Tony worked as a freelance reporter for Bay Net. He also wrote for his college newspaper, the A&T Register, while in school. Tony hopes to make a difference in the community as a journalist. He is also a lifetime martial artist. When he isn’t writing, you can find him training at Gracie Randallstown Jiu-Jitsu.

Lee Sanderlin joined The Baltimore Sun’s criminal justice team on Monday to cover state and federal law enforcement and federal courts, a beat that will include the attorney general’s unit that investigates police-related deaths. Lee is a graduate of Appalachian State University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, where he studied investigative reporting.

Most recently, Lee worked as an investigative and political reporter for the Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi. Originally from High Point, North Carolina, Lee has worked at various newspapers in his home state, including the Winston-Salem Journal.

Lea Skene joined The Baltimore Sun’s criminal justice team on Monday to cover the intersection of people and crime, including stories about day-to-day street crime, violence, victims, advocates, protest movements and the prison system. Lea recently moved to Baltimore from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she spent four years covering crime, policing and criminal justice policy for The Advocate. Before that, she worked at the Reading Eagle in Reading, Pennsylvania, and the Manhattan Mercury in Manhattan, Kansas. She earned a degree in English from George Washington University. 

A Massachusetts native, Lea was eager to move back to the East Coast. She’s thrilled to continue covering important stories about people involved in the criminal justice system.