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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Some parts of public life in the U.S. still operate according to restrictive rules, and that includes planes, trains and buses. -
Biden says, "Today is a great day for America and our long battle with coronavirus. ... It's been made possible by the extraordinary success we've had in vaccinating so many Americans so quickly." -
The White House has been urging family doctors to encourage vaccination of adolescents and the CDC director said "providers may begin vaccinating them right away." -
The judge found that Chauvin abused a position of trust, treated George Floyd with "particular cruelty," committed the crime as part of a group, and the offense occurred in front of children. -
"This tournament was a culmination of years of innate and not-so-well concealed racism within the debate community that came to a head," says Daniel Edwards, the Morehouse College team captain. -
Menthol has been the last allowable flavor in cigarettes, and the FDA says marginalized communities are far more likely to use these products. -
Judge Jeffrey Foster ordered law enforcement to disclose videos to Brown's family within 10 days but blocked public release until an investigation of the shooting is complete in 30 to 45 days. -
An indictment describes four instances last year in which Sheriff Victor Hill ordered detainees restrained in a chair for hours, though the men had offered no resistance. -
Users will now encounter pop-ups asking whether they want to allow their data to be shared with third parties. That little question could have a big impact on advertising companies like Facebook. -
"Californians want better and need better from their politicians," the 71-year-old Republican said. The state's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, is likely to face a recall election this year.
