Megan Valley

Megan Valley covers education for the Belleville News-Democrat in Belleville, Ill. She covered K-12 and higher education for the Quad-City Times in Davenport, Iowa for a year and a half. A 2018 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, she double-majored in English and the Program of Liberal Studies, and worked for The Observer, the student paper, first as a news writer and eventually as assistant managing editor. She was an intern at Ave Maria Press, a Catholic publisher, in Notre Dame and wrote on music for Exclaim!, a monthly Canadian music magazine. The summer after graduating, Valley attended New York University’s Summer Publishing Institute. She grew up in Flushing, Michigan, a suburb of Flint.

Belleville News-Democrat

The Belleville News-Democrat is a 161-year-old news organization that covers Southwestern Illinois, including the communities east of St. Louis and across the Mississippi River, in an area known as the metro-east. Our coverage area is an eclectic mix of mid-sized and smaller towns, bedroom communities and farm country. Many residents commute to St. Louis for work everyday. We are also home to Scott Air Force Base, with its 13,000 military and civilian workers.