West Virginia

Caelan Bailey

Caelan Bailey covers the new rural landscape for 100 Days in Appalachia. Before joining Report for America, Bailey's freelance work appeared in 100 Days, The Assembly, and Burnaway. Previously, she was West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s state politics reporter and managing editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator’s long-form journalism magazine, The Eye.

100 Days in Appalachia

100 Days in Appalachia is a nonprofit newsroom that exists to detail the complex ecosystem that makes up the Appalachian region by weaving beats, including culture, health, religion, politics, environment, and tech across generations. We’re here to amplify the region’s diverse voices, celebrate our successes, investigate our failures and empower our communities – and help other newsrooms do the same.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting

West Virginia Public Broadcasting is a public media dual licensee — it holds the sole statewide PBS and NPR licenses in West Virginia. WVPB covers West Virginia and many of the bordering counties of its five neighboring states. WVPB’s content output is primarily audio, but they also produce video for TV and digital platforms. They produce a live television show, The Legislature Today, every weekday during West Virginia’s 60-day legislative session. WVPB has a full-time staff of 52, with several part-time and paid intern positions. The mission of West Virginia Public Broadcasting is to educate, inform and inspire residents by telling West Virginia’s story. Closed Position: This Report for America corps member is based in Charleston, the state capital, and works under the mentorship of senior reporter, Dave Mistich, on the public affairs beat, including coverage of the legislative session. This reporter works primarily in audio. Outside of the legislative session, the focus is on the southern coalfields of West Virginia. This position fills a critical coverage gap for WVPB, while also contributing to government accountability reporting in the region.

100 Days in Appalachia

A digital news publication, 100 Days in Appalachia has a mission to share the diverse stories of the 13 states that make up this region. Working with local voices to apply a cultural lens to what’s happening here, it shares what that means for the rest of the world.

Ellen Heffernan

Ellie Heffernan is Mountain State Spotlight’s community watchdog reporter, based in Charleston, West Virginia.  She is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill, where she studied journalism and environmental studies. Ellie has written for several publications in North Carolina, including INDY Week, The Local Reporter, The UNC Institute for the Environment, and The Daily Tar Heel, and was also a MDDC Press Association Reese Cleghorn Intern at The Daily Record in Baltimore, Maryland, for which she was recognized for her reporting on the area's independent music venues. In her spare time, she likes reading, playing her clarinet or guitar, and hanging out with her cat, Franklin. She can also (kind-of) speak four languages: Macedonian, French, English, and Wolof.

Laura Harbert Allen

Laura Harbert Allen covers the intersection of religion, politics and culture for 100 Days in Appalachia, a nonprofit digital news organization. Prior to joining 100 Days, she contributed to podcasts such as “Making Contact,” “Us & Them,” “Freakonomics Radio” and “Inside Appalachia.” Allen is completing her Ph.D. at the Scripps College of Communication at Ohio University, where she has taught media criticism and audio/podcasting for three years. Her career in media—a total accident—began when she unknowingly walked into a public radio studio in New Bern, North Carolina. She has since been a public media host, reporter, producer and manager in New Bern, Richmond, Kentucky, and West Virginia, and for eight years she was the communications director for the West Virginia United Methodist Conference.

Mountain State Spotlight

This new investigative and enterprise hub was launched in 2020 and is led by longtime West Virginia journalists Greg Moore, a former editor at the Charleston Gazette-Mail, and Ken Ward Jr., a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” grant winner for his longtime work covering coal mining and other polluting industries. The staff includes four current RFA Corps members.

Quenton King

Quenton King is the public health reporter for Mountain State Spotlight. He is a native West Virginian, born and raised in Charles Town in the Eastern Panhandle. He previously worked as a policy analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. His past research and organizing work focused on criminal justice, public health, and environmental justice issues. Quenton holds a bachelor's degree from West Virginia University and a master's of public health from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.