Watchdog and community reporting in rural West Virginia

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.

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.

Emily Allen

Emily Allen covers West Virginia's smaller counties, towns and the people who live there as a community watchdog reporter for Mountain State Spotlight, an investigative and enterprise news site based in Charleston, West Virginia. Allen spent her first two years with Report for America at West Virginia Public Broadcasting, where she reported on government and public affairs in the southern part of the state. Prior to that, Allen was on the city hall beat for the Grand Forks Herald, writing about government and politics for communities in northeast North Dakota and northwest Minnesota. Allen earned her B.A. from the University of Minnesota. She grew up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin.

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.