Laurel Wamsley
Laurel Wamsley is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She reports breaking news for NPR's digital coverage, newscasts, and news magazines, as well as occasional features. She was also the lead reporter for NPR's coverage of the 2019 Women's World Cup in France.
Wamsley got her start at NPR as an intern for Weekend Edition Saturday in January 2007 and stayed on as a production assistant for NPR's flagship news programs, before joining the Washington Desk for the 2008 election.
She then left NPR, doing freelance writing and editing in Austin, Texas, and then working in various marketing roles for technology companies in Austin and Chicago.
In November 2015, Wamsley returned to NPR as an associate producer for the National Desk, where she covered stories including Hurricane Matthew in coastal Georgia. She became a Newsdesk reporter in March 2017, and has since covered subjects including climate change, possibilities for social networks beyond Facebook, the sex lives of Neanderthals, and joke theft.
In 2010, Wamsley was a Journalism and Women Symposium Fellow and participated in the German-American Fulbright Commission's Berlin Capital Program, and was a 2016 Voqal Foundation Fellow. She will spend two months reporting from Germany as a 2019 Arthur F. Burns Fellow, a program of the International Center for Journalists.
Wamsley earned a B.A. with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Wamsley holds a master's degree from Ohio University, where she was a Public Media Fellow and worked at NPR Member station WOUB. A native of Athens, Ohio, she now lives and bikes in Washington, DC.
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More than 1,000 employees at the pork plant in Iowa have been infected by the virus, and at least six have died. The company launched an independent investigation into the complaints last month. -
"This pandemic has been a wrecking ball in the lives of Americans already struggling," Scott wrote, announcing gifts to organizations in all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico.
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Under Mayor Anne Hidalgo, 11 female and five male officials were appointed in 2018 to high-level roles — despite a rule that at least 40% of such positions should go to people of each gender. -
On the United Nations' new Planetary Pressures-Adjusted Human Development Index, the United States drops 45 places from its overall ranking, a reflection of the country's outsize environmental impact. -
Black Lives Matters signs from two historic Black churches were destroyed. William Lamar IV says his congregation will keep its "desire to make this nation what it claims to be, but never has been." -
"Donors will no longer be asked to declare if they have had sex with another man, making the criteria for blood donation gender neutral and more inclusive," the National Health Service explains. -
The CDC estimates 330,000 health care personnel could be pregnant or recently postpartum at the time of vaccine implementation. -
Johnny Roman Garza, 21, pleaded guilty in September to conspiring with three other members of a group called the Atomwaffen Division to identify and threaten journalists and activists. -
"Why is the fourth official saying 'negro'?" demanded soccer player Demba Ba. The official, Sebastian Coltescu of Romania, faces a 10-game ban if he's found guilty of making a racist statement. -
A majority of hospital nurses said they had never been tested for the coronavirus, according to a recent survey. Hospitals say they are simply following the CDC's guidance.
