Criminal Justice in Nashville

WPLN

Nashville Public Radio’s flagship news station, WPLN 90.3, is a dynamic local news provider that reaches more than 20 counties in Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. With a potential audience of over 2 million listeners, many of whom are located in rural areas outside of Metropolitan Nashville, our content is distributed through multiple delivery platforms and channels, via FM, AM, HD radio, computer streams, a robust website and podcasts. WPLN has an award-winning news team of 10 journalists: two editors, five reporters, two host/reporters and a digital director. Its mission is to create stories that help our audience understand the most important issues facing the community.

Samantha Max

Samantha Max was an investigative reporting intern for the Medill Justice Project and a bilingual multimedia news intern at Hoy, Chicago Tribune’s Spanish-language daily. She returned to her hometown of Baltimore in 2015 and again in 2016 to work as a newsroom intern for NPR-affiliate WYPR. She has written on immigration and the criminal justice system. Samantha spent her first year with Report for America at The Telegraph in Macon, Georgia, where she covered health and inequity in central Georgia. For her second year as a corps member, she’ll cover the criminal justice system for Nashville Public Radio.  

Nashville Public Radio

About the News Organization: Nashville Public Radio’s flagship news station, WPLN 90.3, is a dynamic local news provider that reaches more than 20 counties in Middle Tennessee and southern Kentucky. With a potential audience of over 2 million listeners, many of whom are located in rural areas outside of Metropolitan Nashville, our content is distributed through multiple delivery platforms and channels, via FM, AM, HD radio, computer streams, a robust website and podcasts. WPLN has an award-winning news team of 10 journalists: two editors, five reporters, two host/reporters and a digital director. Its mission is to create stories that help our audience understand the most important issues facing the community. About the Position: This Report for America corps member focuses on identifying underlying trends and critical deficiencies in the criminal justice system in our region. This person explores and reports on issues that can dramatically affect people’s lives — like bail bonds, ICE detention policies, or jail fees — but are rarely reported with depth. Some big stories may include: two recent high profile police shootings; the development of a new community oversight board for police; our local school district’s attempt to reduce the school-to-prison pipeline using restorative justice; Nashville’s anomaly of experiencing very low unemployment but high rates of crime; and the impact of North Nashville having the highest rate of incarceration in the country. The reporter works in both text and audio, and receives mentoring from an award-winning news team with extensive experience in every facet of journalism, including breaking news, audio storytelling, radio and web writing, ethics and social media reporting. WPLN has a long history of excellence in training young reporters.