Reuben J. Brown

Reuben J. Brown is a multimedia journalist based between Phoenix and London. He works as a photographer, writer, and editor on stories about very big systems, the people shaping them, and the people they shape.

He is currently pursuing an M.A. in Investigative Journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix, Arizona, where he is also a Steele Fellow in Investigative Business Journalism. From Phoenix, he has photographed stories covering science, weather, migration, business, and education. He was one of the first journalists to visit the site of new border wall construction in Arizona’s remote San Rafael Valley in September 2025 and recently photographed Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Fukushima while on a reporting trip organized by the Cronkite School.

Beyond his master’s degree, Reuben has worked on assignment as a photographer for The Wall Street Journal and as an assistant for editorial and commercial photographers in the U.K. His work has been published in Icarus Complex, and he is a student member of the Greater Los Angeles Press Photographers Association, receiving mentorship from veteran photojournalists. He attended the 2025 Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, receiving portfolio reviews from leading editors and photographers and engaging in seminar sessions.

As an undergraduate student, Reuben studied architecture at the University of Cambridge, where he was president of the student architecture society. This design background continues to inform his compositional instincts and journalistic interests. After graduating from Cambridge, he worked as a freelance production assistant on shoots for BBC Maestro and became Digital Editor at The Architectural Review. He had responsibilities across visuals editing at the magazine while also working on cross-platform audience strategy, and writing on architecture, politics and international exhibitions.

Reuben is an avid reader and subscribes to at least eight print magazines. He has learned equal amounts in photography classes as he has from annotating double-page spreads in The Atlantic. This generous scholarship from the National Press Photographers Foundations will help him realize his ambitions to see his own work in pages like this.