Michelle was a reporting intern for the Toledo Blade, and a general assignment intern for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. As a reporter for the Yale Daily News and a contributing reporter for the New Haven Independent, she shadowed canvassers in New Hampshire and covered labor unions in Connecticut. She was also a program coordinator for Yale’s Summer Journalism Program for high school students. Since joining Report for America, Liu has covered criminal justice for Mississippi Today. The Institute for Non-Profit News named Michelle’s reporting on the spike of prison deaths in Mississippi as one of the “Best in Nonprofit News” in 2018. Her continued reporting on this and other stories not only helped lead the MDOC to invite the FBI to get involved in the investigation of these deaths, but her dogged records requests were cited by the Department of Corrections while asking the Legislature to exempt agencies from parts of the Public Records Act. More recently, the Mississippi Humanities Council invited Michelle to moderate a panel titled, “Locked Up: Criminal Justice in Mississippi.” She continues this work in her second year with Report for America.
Beat: Criminal justice and public policy in Mississippi
Michelle has been expanding written coverage of public policy issues, particularly health care, in the nation’s poorest state, especially in the Mississippi Delta and other poverty-affected areas.