News Staff Bios

Award–winning Journalist Andrea Bernstein heads up coverage of transportation, urban planning, and sustainability on WNYC, The Takeaway, and WNYC.org. She is also a regular guest–host for Brian Lehrer and The Takeaway.

In 2007 and 2008, as Political Director, Bernstein covered the Presidential election from the primaries through the debates to election night, culminating her work in the Takeaway series "Counties that Count," which focused on voter attitudes and opinions in eleven key swing counties across America.

Bernstein joined the WNYC news staff in 1998. She’s covered government and politics for over a decade, and has at various points been assigned to Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, George Pataki, Eliot Spitzer, David Paterson, and Charles Schumer. She’s also covered rebuilding at the World Trade Center Site and the campaign for the 2012 Olympics.

Bernstein was one of 12 US Journalists to win a prestigious 2007 Knight Fellowship at Stanford University. She has won over 3 dozen team and individual awards for her work, including the Investigative Reporters and Editors award for radio, the National Press Club award for environmental reporting, and national Murrow and Society for Professional Journalists awards for investigative reporting.

She was a political correspondent for the New York Observer for eight years, and her work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, Newsday, the Nation, and Salon.com.

She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and two children.

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 economics reporter at WNYC. She tries to explore in her stories surprising aspects of New York’s many economies—in plain view or hidden, in neighborhoods or sectors. She has reported on why produce in Chinatown is so cheap, how two entrepreneurs planned to make money buying bad mortgages, and how pawnshops have capitalized on the rising price of gold. Before coming to WNYC, Lisa worked as an assistant editor at NPR’s Morning Edition program, where she booked guests, edited 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 is the local host of “All Things Considered,” which airs from 4 PM until 8 PM weekdays. She started hosting in 2004, after long-time host JoAnn Allen left for the West Coast. Before ATC, Amy was a reporter. Her favorite topics were—and still are—garbage and recycling, which she still reports on whenever she can get out of the studio.

Amy joined WNYC in 1998, after serving as the news director and morning news host at WFUV-NY for almost four years. Amy 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.

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 is WNYC’s education reporter, and also covers city affairs. She’s been on staff with the station since 1995, and previously covered City Hall during the Giuliani administration, and the U.S. Senate campaigns of Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton. She also covered transportation and infrastructure. Beth covered education all along, but as the station’s news department grew bigger she was able to spend more time examining the city’s public schools and the reforms of the Bloomberg administration.

"If New York City’s public schools were a city, they’d be one of the ten largest cities in the United States," she says. “With over a million students and another couple of hundred thousand employees the Department of Education is a fascinating microcosm —or macrocosm. And with the federal stimulus dollars, and the Obama Administration’s interest in school reform, there is a lot happening in education right now."

Beth is a New York City native who discovered her love for journalism at her college newspaper at the University of Michigan. She also has a Masters degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Her first job after college was as a reporter for a chain of weekly newspapers 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 frequent contributor to National Public Radio. She’s won many 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 also won an Edward R. Murrow award for an investigation of a subway fire. And she’s won 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.

In 2008, Beth took time off from WNYC to write her first book. It’s called "Why cant u teach me 2 read? Three Students and a Mayor Put Our Schools to the Test" and was published in the fall of 2009 by FSG Books. The book grew out of a 2006 WNYC radio series on the low graduation rate for special education students.

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.

As managing editor, Karen works on the many and varied stories that emerge from the microphones and recorders of the reporting and hosting 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. She then 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 authors including Alice Walker, Bob Woodward, Hunter S. Thompson and Stephen Ambrose. 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 public school strike and the changes in the city six 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, the Associated Press Association, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the News Directors Association, the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families 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 River pool for kids.

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.

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 and his wife life in Brooklyn.

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.

Julianne was bitten by the public radio bug while doing a student work study job at Fordham University’s WFUV. She recorded programs like Soundprint and Marketplace for later broadcast and soon wanted to make radio just like it. WFUV and subsequent jobs at fellow NPR affiliates WSCL–FM in Salisbury, Maryland and WAMU–FM in Washington, DC, afforded plenty of opportunities. There, she covered everything from Chesapeake Bay watermen (and women), to politics on Capitol Hll. She also wore host, producer and editor hats, and contributed reports to National Public Radio and other networks. Since returning to New York in 2000, Julianne has focused on helping others make radio. For eight years, she proudly led WFUV’s next generation of aspiring journalists while co–hosting the music/information program "City Folk Morning." Julianne currently teaches radio skills at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

Patricia helps to oversee the newsroom, edit features, and develop story projects for the air and online. She started at WNYC as a freelance reporter and producer before coming on full–time in 2002 to produce the local Morning Edition. She has helped shape the newsroom and its coverage priorities as it has doubled in size. Top priorities have been the station’s expanded election coverage and its growing online presence. Patricia started her career as a reporter at a weekly paper outside of Boston. She then reported abroad and on Capitol Hill before coming to New York to work at Reuters. She grew up listening to NPR and happily subjects her family to hours of radio listening in their Lower Manhattan apartment.

BRIAN ZUMHAGEN

Reporter/Weekend Edition Host

Brian Zumhagen has been a weekend anchor at WNYC since 2003. His career in journalism started in 1993, with an internship in the press office of the German Green Party’s parliamentary delegation. Brian went on to spend the rest of the ‘90s working as a reporter, producer, and fill-in anchor at NPR member station KQED in San Francisco. He’s returned to Germany several times over the years for reporting projects. Most recently, he won a grant from the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship to produce radio features for the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Before coming to WNYC, 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. Brian lives in Queens with his wife and children.

People at WNYC