People at WNYC

News Staff Bios

WNYC Political Director Andrea Bernstein is charge of political and campaign coverage at WNYC. Since joining WNYC in 1998 Bernstein has extensively covered national, local, and state politics. She’s covered Hillary Clinton since rumors began of a New York Senate race (including the short-lived Senate race against Rudy Giuliani) and has extensively covered City Hall during both the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations.

Her work has been honored with numerous prestigious awards, including the 2003 Investigative Reporters and Editors prize for radio, the 2003 Heyward Broun Award, the 2003 Society for Professional Journalists award, for her series, with Amy Eddings, on New York's "Handshake Hotels" for the Homeless. She has also won the 2001 National Press Club Robert Kozik Prize for Environmental reporting for "The Toxic Valley: PCBs along the Upper Hudson" and the 2000 National Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting for "NYPD Strip Searches: Though Illegal: the Practice Continues."

In 2006-2007 Bernstein was one of 12 top U.S. journalists to win a Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Newsday, New York Magazine, Salon.com, and the New York Observer, where Bernstein was a political correspondent from 1995-2003.

Dan joined the station in 2004 as producer of WNYC’s All Things Considered and later moved on to Morning Edition. He works closely with the show’s host to keep the content interesting and fresh. He also handles breaking news, such as the transit strike, and reports on a variety of stories, ranging from the court battle over same sex marriage to the efforts to bring a NASCAR race track to Staten Island. Prior to joining WNYC, Dan worked at WBEZ Chicago Public Radio for more than two years. There he rose from intern to produce the station’s 2002 election coverage and became an associate editor and director of Eight Forty-Eight, a daily news and cultural affairs show. Dan is proud to say he grew up on Roosevelt Island and, though he has since moved on to Brooklyn, he happened to be there the night a power failure left the tram stuck over the East River for hours on end. Dan got his start in radio at Wesleyan University’s WESU where he hosted a jazz music show and called play by play for baseball and football games.

Lisa Chow is the narrative economics reporter at WNYC. She tries to find stories that explore surprising aspects of New York’s many economies—in plain view or hidden, in neighborhoods or sectors. She’s reported on why produce in Chinatown is so cheap, why most U.S. economists believe rent regulation is bad for New York, and how bodega managers stock their shelves differently to adjust to gentrification in their neighborhoods. Before coming to WNYC, Lisa worked as an assistant editor at NPR’s Morning Edition program, where she booked guests, edited host interviews, and reported stories for the business segment. She has also worked as a newspaper reporter in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Lisa has a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics from Brown University and a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University. She lives in Brooklyn.

Amy Eddings owes her start in radio to Richard Bolles’ career-changing classic, What Color is Your Parachute? Prior to reading that book, she worked in a law firm and wrote Off-Off Broadway reviews. She joined WNYC in 1998, after serving as the news director and morning news host at WFUV-NY for almost four years. She’s reported on a wide range of topics, from waterfront development to the Roman Catholic Church’s child sexual abuse scandal, but her favorite stories involve garbage and recycling. She started hosting ATC in 2004, after long-time host JoAnn Allen left for the West Coast. Amy, along with her colleague, Andrea Bernstein, has received several awards for their series on homeless housing, “Handshake Hotels.” Those awards include the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2003 Sigma Chi Delta Award for investigative reporting, the Investigative Reporters and Editors prize for radio, and The Newspaper Guild’s 2003 Heywood Broun Award, which acknowledges journalistic achievement, especially if it helps right a wrong or correct an injustice. Amy has also received the New York Press Club’s 2002 Feature Award for her story on a church in the Rockaways, which held 15 funerals and memorial services in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks and the crash of American Airlines Flight 587. Her work and family series, “The Juggling Act,” won a bronze medal at the 1998 International Radio Festival.

Beth Fertig covers the city schools, transportation and the infrastructure of New York. She’s been on staff with WNYC since 1995. Previously, Beth was a newspaper reporter in Boston. Her boss told her she had a flair for quoting people exactly the way they spoke, so she began interning at the former Monitor Radio network to see if she would enjoy working in radio. She did and she hasn’t looked back since.

Beth is a New York City native who discovered her love for journalism at her college newspaper at the University of Michigan. She enjoys working as a journalist in her hometown. "There are so many people here from so many places, and such a variety of personalities, that it’s fascinating to watch how we deal with each other as a society.”

Beth is a frequent contributor to National Public Radio. She's won several local and national awards, including the prestigious Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award for broadcast journalism for her series of reports on an effort to privatize some struggling city schools. She’s also won several awards from the city's Deadline Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the New York Press Club – which gave her a special award after the 2001 terrorist attacks for a profile on the friendship of two WTC survivors. Beth was also sent on loan to public radio station KRVS in Lafayette, Louisiana in 2005 to cover the cleanup and recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

Jenna Flanagan has been an Associate Producer, and contributing reporter for WNYCs All Things Considered, local news since 2006. Prior to that, she worked 3 years as a general assignment reporter for the WBGO news department and won a Garden State Association of Black Journalists award. Her interest in journalism began in middle school when she attended a journalism camp at SUNY New Paltz at age 12. She wrote for her high school newspaper, and then, at Seton Hall, was on the staff of the college newspaper, The Setonian. After graduating from college with a B.A. in Communications in 1999, she began freelancing as a News Production Assistant and Engineer for 1010 WINS in New York City.

Jenna knew she wanted to be a full time journalist after the September 11th attacks.

Karen Frillmann, WNYC’s Editor-at-Large is based in the newsroom and works on the many and varied stories that emerge from the microphones and recorders of the reporting staff. She got her start in broadcast journalism at WNYC when it was still New York City's Municipal Broadcasting System.

As a producer she launched "Senior Edition" now known as "The Leonard Lopate Show" which helped establish WNYC as a destination for talk and public affairs. Leaving WNYC, she worked for a number of years as a freelance reporter and producer contributing to National Public Radio and the Canadian Broadcasting Company. As a senior producer in Simon and Schuster’s Audio division, Karen worked with Alice Walker, Bob Woodward, Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen Ambrose and many other notable authors. She returned to public radio as an editor and co-producer for a series of documentaries which included an exploration of the changing NY Waterfront, the 1968 school strike and the changes in the city 6 months after the attacks of September 11th. Her achievements have been recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists, the Armstrong Award, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences from whom she received a Grammy nomination for her production of "War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars."

Growing up in southeast Queens and having lived in various neighborhoods around the city Karen is very happy to continue to document and report on her hometown. On summer weekends she can be found swimming upriver in the Hudson where she has helped to establish a free floating Riverpool for kids in Beacon, NY.

Sara Fishko, a native New Yorker, has spent her professional life juggling careers in radio and film; though she is now firmly in the radio world. She learned the ropes of radio at Pacifica's WBAI in the 70's, where she won two Armstrong Awards, and came to WNYC in the early 80's as a weekend classical music host (all the while editing documentary films during the week). Fishko, also a trained pianist, hosted the classical music program "Sunday Best" at WNYC in the 1980's, and many other programs in the 90's, until she began producing music/culture/art/media pieces in 1999. Those award-winning features, "The Fishko Files," are now a staple of WNYC's cultural programming, as are her one-hour programs on musical figures. Her special for the Public Radio Collaboration in 2003 was "What Can I Say," a look at Patriotism and Dissent in art, culture and media. The Fishko Files have appeared in Morning Edition, All Things Considered, On The Media, Studio 360 and Performance Today. Fishko was a recipient of the USC/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship for 2003.

Since 1992, Richard Hake has worked as News Host and Reporter at WNYC. His live and produced radio feature segments range from hard breaking news to cultural and artistic sound portraits. Richard’s work has been heard both nationally and locally on the NPR programs, Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, All Things Considered and On The Media. His voice is regularly heard during on air fundraisers and as fill in host for various WNYC shows. Richard can also be seen on television as the host of MTV Networks LOGO program, “The Advocate Newsmagazine.”

Before coming to WNYC, Richard was at WFUV FM-New York as morning drive newscaster and reporter. He has also provided stories for National Public Radio, The BBC, The Associated Press, WBGO-FM, WOR-AM, WCBS-AM and United Press International.

Mr. Hake’s feature and documentary work, including the Coney Island Cyclone Anniversary and The Perfume of The Bronx, earned him awards from The Associated Press Broadcasters Association, The Society of Professional Journalists, The New York Press Club, The Society of the Silurians and The National Federation of Community Broadcasters.

Richard, a native New Yorker, is a graduate of Fordham University and sits on its Edward Walsh Scholarship committee. He currently resides in Manhattan.

WNYC's Bob Hennelly is an award winning investigative journalist. While at WNYC he has reported on a wide gamut of major public policy questions ranging from immigration and homeland security to power outages and utility mergers. Born in Paterson, New Jersey, he has always had a keen interest in the role of immigration in the evolution of the United States historically. Before coming to WNYC he was national affairs correspondent for Pacifica Network News. His written work has appeared in the New York Times, the Village Voice, the Chrisitian Science Monitor, the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press, and dozens of other magazines and newspapers. He has acted as a consultant/reporter for “6O Minutes” and been featured on C-Span's “America and the Courts” as well as on C-Span's “Washington Roundtable.” He went to Ramapo College in New Jersey and also worked there as an adjunct teaching environmental journalism, a course he originated. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and three daughters.

Kathryn Herzog began her broadcasting career at community radio station KFAI in Minneapolis. While studying German at the University of Minnesota, she stopped in at the station one day—and was hosting the evening news the next. Since then, she has reported for Minnesota Public Radio, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium and the Osgood Files on CBS Radio. In 2001, she began producing Pacifica Radio's national daily programs, The Pacifica Network News and The Pacifica Report from Washington D.C. Herzog has produced numerous investigative stories on the safety of genetically altered foods, U.S. nuclear reactors and the impact of economic sanctions, a story which took her to Iraq in 2001. Since 2002, Herzog has worked as a newscaster and host at WNYC. You can also hear her as co-host of Newsweek magazine’s radio program, Newsweek on Air. Herzog lives in Brooklyn with her husband Michael John Carley and two sons.

Kathleen has been talking to strangers all her life –wishing other people could hear the things they told her.

She began recording oral histories while she was still an actress in San Francisco. After interning with NPR’s the Kitchen Sisters and On the Media she was hired as a News Assistant in the WNYC newsroom. Kathleen helped report on the September 11th terrorist attacks, the blackout and the transit strike. She won a first place award from the Associated Press for her feature story on the lives of food delivery workers in 2005 and was promoted to general assignment reporter in 2006. Her work has also aired nationally and internationally on NPR, PRI and the BBC. She loves getting to tell the stories of New Yorkers, especially the non-famous and infamous.

Before you ask... it's Greek. And, so is Johnson (via translation). It's a long story... Soterios Johnson seemed strangely drawn to the news, even as a young child. As a kid he would lull himself to sleep listening to WCBS NewsRadio 88. "As a kid, I always wanted to be in the know... and to spread the word," he says. In high school, Soterios worked at a small FM station in his hometown in New Jersey, followed by a four-year stint as an undergraduate at Columbia on WKCR, New York. He was an Associate Producer at Newsweek On Air and worked in the field of science journalism for several years. He earned his master's degree at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism. "My father always said he didn't want me going into radio because of the crazy hours and the less-than-great pay," Soterios says. "Well, I'm such a rebel, I took it a step further -- public radio! I just love it. I think we make a difference."

John Keefe is WNYC's Senior Executive Producer for News, leading the station's news coverage, documentary work and investigative projects. Since 2002, Keefe has been working to build WNYC's breaking news response, intensify its election coverage, and develop a focus on investigative reporting -- all while guiding the growth and expansion of the WNYC news team. Keefe is also executive producer of "NPR's On The Media," which WNYC produces, and is a senior advisor to a new morning program being developed by WNYC with PRI, the BBC, the New York Times and WGBH. He also teaches radio journalism as an adjunct professor at Columbia University. Keefe's journalism career began as a general-assignment and police-beat reporter at The Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, Wisconsin. Other stops on the way to WNYC include police reporting at the Racine (Wisconsin) Journal Times, serving as science editor for Discovery Channel Online, and co-creating a children's science adventure show, called Kinetic City Super Crew, for which he won the George Foster Peabody award.

Marianne McCune is a staff reporter for New York Public Radio (WNYC 93.9FM/AM820) and contributes regularly to National Public Radio and Public Radio International. She thinks of the New York Metropolitan Area as the center of the world because that's how she covers it: more than a third of New York residents were born in another country and Marianne reports on the resulting cultural, economic, and political links between New York/New Jersey and almost everywhere else on earth. Marianne has won local and national awards for her reporting, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Award for her series "Going Home in Handcuffs" following the journey of a group of Pakistanis as they were deported from the United States. Her reporting has also taken her to Haiti, Mexico, Burundi, and Ethiopia. She speaks Spanish and French. Marianne is also the founder of Radio Rookies, an award-winning series of stories written, reported, and produced by New York teenagers. Radio Rookies has won a Peabody award and been honored for "outstanding reporting on the problems of the disadvantaged" by the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Domestic Radio.

Fred Mogul has been covering healthcare and medicine for WNYC since 2002. He is one of the few people in his family who is not a doctor, but enjoys playing one on the radio. His beat takes him everywhere from veterans hospitals to midwife centers to AIDS clinics and research labs. He first tried his hand at radio reporting at WFCR in western Massachusetts during college, but it took a decade for him to circle back to public radio at WHYY and WRTI in Philadelphia. In the intervening years, he worked as a staff reporter and free-lance writer for newspapers, magazines, and wire services. He also worked for public and cable television, producing historical, public affairs and health documentaries and shows. Raised in Westchester County, he has lived in Israel, Hong Kong, Washington, D.C., Kansas, Nebraska and Philadelphia. In addition to numerous stories on NPR, his work has appeared in the New York Times, Time magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other publications and broadcast outlets. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his dog Nomi.

Chris Reilly has worked as a newscaster at WNYC since 1999. His radio career began when he was in college at WFUV, at Fordham University. In between, he worked on the Wall Street Journal radio network. You can also hear Chris on WINS, the all-news station in New York. He lives in Midtown.

Elaine Rivera joined the WNYC staff as the politics/economic development reporter in August. Prior to her arrival, Elaine had worked as a staff reporter at the Washington Post. From 1995 to 2001, she was a correspondent in the New York bureau for Time magazine. There, she worked on a variety of major stories that included the crash of TWA Flight 800, the police shooting of Amadou Diallo and the Mexico border crossings. After she left Time, she worked as a reporter on a number of Sept. 11 projects which included the award-winning Frontline documentary, “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero” and the Life Magazine photo project, “Faces of Ground Zero.” She also covered the 2002 Winter Olympics for NBC’s web site. Rivera was also a staff reporter for nine years at New York Newsday where she focused on immigration and urban issues. Other publications she has worked for included El Diario La Prensa, The Washington Times, Hispanic Link News Service, and the Akron Beacon Journal. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, Rivera received her B.A. in journalism from Kent State University.

Cindy Rodriguez has been a staff reporter at WNYC, New York Public Radio since July of 2002. As the station’s urban policy reporter she covers the impacts of poverty on communities in all five boroughs. Her stories include in- depth looks at homelessness in New York City as well as the child welfare system. Rodriguez also reports on the problems poor immigrants encounter when living in the country illegally. In 2005 she contributed to a one hour award winning documentary—Feet in Two Worlds – Immigrants in a Global City. She has also contributed to the nationally distributed NPR program Latino USA. Among her stories was a post- September 11th feature that earned her an NFCB Golden Reel Award. Rodriguez is the voice of the Panorama at the Queens Museum of Art. This large scale model of the city was created by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair. Originally from San Antonio, she moved to New York City in 1995 and lives in Queens. Prior to her work as a journalist, she worked as a caseworker distributing public assistance programs in Austin, Texas. Rodriguez graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1991.

Patricia grew up listening to NPR, but it took a few years working as a print reporter and wandering the globe to come home. She loves the medium of public radio because it’s direct and visceral…and it covers the world better than any other U.S. news source. At WNYC, Patricia has worn several hats, producing the local programming for Morning Edition, reporting on urban and transportation issues, and now managing the expanding local news department. She lives in Lower Manhattan with her husband and three children.

BRIAN ZUMHAGEN

Host: Weekend Edition

Brian Zumhagen started his public radio career at KQED-FM in San Francisco, where he worked from 1993 to 1999 as a producer, anchor and general assignment reporter. He specialized in transportation issues and also covered California’s affirmative action ban, Proposition 209. In 1994, he was an Arthur F. Burns fellow at Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk in Halle, Germany, where he produced a series on German immigration and naturalization policies. In 1998, he was a RIAS Berlin Commission fellow, and he returned to Germany in 1999 to report on eastern German women ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The resulting article in Ms. Magazine won the 2000 Arthur F. Burns Journalism Award. Before coming to WNYC in 2003, Brian was a frequent contributor to PRI’s The World. He reported for the program on 9/11 and served as the show’s United Nations correspondent during the run-up to the Iraq war.

People at WNYC