I covered the city of Schenectady for The Daily Gazette in Schenectady, New York. After joining the Gazette in May 2016, I worked on two beats. I started covering the Schenectady County legislature and towns within the county, and transitioned in September 2016 to cover Schenectady's neighborhoods and city hall.
I covered breaking news, worked on daily beat stories, came up with enterprise ideas and developed sources. You can find a sampling of my work below.
As the city beat reporter, much of my work focused on City Hall. I attended all city council and planning board meetings, and wrote dozens of stories based off what I heard there. I produced articles on council budget discussions and disagreements over how to spend city money, and I constantly churn out daily stories that break news about business, politics and crime in the community.
Opioid series
This three part series ran on the front page of the paper and garnered thousands of views online.
I spent about a month interviewing more than two dozen people in the about how the national opioid epidemic has impacted Schenectady. I also wrote a story assessing what's being done in neighboring communities that's been successful in combatting the crisis, and what those directly affected by opioids are doing about the issue in the city.
Rivers Casino & Resort coverage
One of the biggest recurring stories I've covered on the city beat is activity at Rivers Casino & Resort, a $330 million facility in Schenectady that opened in February 2017.
I planned, reported and wrote a week-long preview series that covered how the casino came to be, what concerns remained, a guide for first-time players and what city residents expected and hoped for.
On opening day, I did quick stories on people lining up hours in advance, the governor speaking at a special ceremony and on the casino causing traffic and parking backups. I wrapped it all up with a full story for the next day's paper.
In the time since the casino opened, I wrote about whether it was providing jobs for locals, how it's used unconventional marketing tactics and how revenues compared to projections.
Code enforcement
In my time on the beat, the city's Code Enforcement Department went through turbulent times. In March 2017, a code officer was indicted in connection to a fatal fire. I wrote a story assessing the code department's role in the blaze.
A couple months later, the department was still leaderless and under audit. I wrote a story looking more broadly at the state of the department, and how it's perceived by residents.
At Great Escape, 'God dropped an angel, and I caught her'
The night of June 24, 2017, a young girl fell from a gondola-style ride at a Six Flags park in our coverage area. Video of the incident quickly went viral. The next morning, I reached out to and secured an interview with two people who caught the girl as she fell. My story was published first among local outlets that interviewed the pair.
Police standoff continues at Halfmoon mobile home
This is the final version of a story that went through many online updates as I covered the first 12 hours of what would end up being a 20-hour police standoff at an area mobile home on Easter Sunday. I wrote up a brief breaking story about the initial police presence, and relayed updates to editors throughout the evening as I received new information. I live-tweeted observations as well, linking back to the story each time, and garnering thousands of page views.
Garbage, litter irk Schenectady residents
After hearing from several residents at meetings and in interviews about their annoyance with the amount of litter on city streets and in neighborhoods, I reported and wrote this beat story. A couple weeks later, the city announced a streamlined citation process for policing those who litter or leave garbage out in their yards.
New app has users scouring landmarks in search of Pokémon
For this story about Pokémon GO, I pitched the idea to editors, reported on it and wrote it in the same day. When I saw the popularity of the game on social media, I thought I could localize it to the Capital Region, which led to this story.