Rose Schnabel covers agriculture, water, and climate in North Central Florida at WUFT News. Before joining Report for America, Schnabel worked as a bilingual AAAS Mass Media Fellow at El Nuevo Día in San Juan, Puerto Rico, covering science and the environment. She holds undergraduate degrees in biology and Spanish from Indiana University, where she completed an honors thesis on the rhetoric of science in the 1950s birth control trials in Puerto Rico. During her time at Indiana, Schnabel worked as a science writer for their College and led the online creative content team of their undergraduate academic journal.
Beat: Agriculture, water and climate in North Central Florida
Rural North Central Florida is home to the Suwannee River—the last major undammed river east of the Mississippi; the largest concentration of freshwater springs in the world; and one of the least-developed coastlines in Florida. Agriculture is a major industry, from shellfish aquaculture in the Gulf to a $2.5 billion thoroughbred industry around Ocala to hundreds of poultry and dairy farms and row crops that draw tens of thousands of immigrant farmworkers. This reporter develops multimedia enterprise stories at the intersection of these communities, water and climate change, with a focus on accountability and solutions reporting.