Louisiana

Emily Woodruff

Emily has been the managing health editor of Being Patient, a health news start-up exclusively covering brain health and Alzheimer’s. As a freelancer, her work has appeared in STAT News, The Baltimore Sun, Gothamist and Refinery29. Earlier she worked as a copywriter and an SEO specialist. She majored in English at the University of Florida in Gainesville and received an M.S. from the Columbia University School of Journalism. Public health in south Louisiana Emily covers healthcare and public health in south Louisiana, with a focus on the New Orleans metro region. Currently, there is not a single, full-time health reporter working for any newsroom in Louisiana, a state that sits near the bottom on nearly every U.S. public health metric. The story of healthcare is also often the story of poverty in America, and the lack of coverage of health in a poor state like Louisiana means important stories are slipping through the cracks. Emily reports to the New Orleans Metro Editor and Managing Editor and covers daily news related to all aspects of public health, including coverage of hospitals, public health officials and health agencies, academic research, and city, state, and national data. She produces enterprise and feature stories for print and online related to these and other related topics. Emily works in concert with journalists who have complementary beats, such as education, business and City Hall, to create stories that have a broader impact.

Paul Braun

Paul Braun reports for WRKF and WWNO, the NPR member stations in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, where he covers the Louisiana Legislature. His coverage of Louisiana politics and policy as the interim capital access reporter for the stations has aired on national programs, including All Things Considered, Morning Edition and Here & Now. Braun continues reporting in the same capacity as a Report for America corps member. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication, where he covered the Louisiana Legislature and the criminal justice system as a member of the Manship School News Service. Braun joined WRKF as an intern in February 2019 and took over as the station’s full-time political reporter six weeks before Louisiana’s gubernatorial primary. He previously worked as an intern at The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, and as a contributing writer and radio reporter for The Daily Reveille, LSU’s student-run newspaper.