Laurel Wamsley
Laurel Wamsley is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She reports breaking news for NPR's digital coverage, newscasts, and news magazines, as well as occasional features. She was also the lead reporter for NPR's coverage of the 2019 Women's World Cup in France.
Wamsley got her start at NPR as an intern for Weekend Edition Saturday in January 2007 and stayed on as a production assistant for NPR's flagship news programs, before joining the Washington Desk for the 2008 election.
She then left NPR, doing freelance writing and editing in Austin, Texas, and then working in various marketing roles for technology companies in Austin and Chicago.
In November 2015, Wamsley returned to NPR as an associate producer for the National Desk, where she covered stories including Hurricane Matthew in coastal Georgia. She became a Newsdesk reporter in March 2017, and has since covered subjects including climate change, possibilities for social networks beyond Facebook, the sex lives of Neanderthals, and joke theft.
In 2010, Wamsley was a Journalism and Women Symposium Fellow and participated in the German-American Fulbright Commission's Berlin Capital Program, and was a 2016 Voqal Foundation Fellow. She will spend two months reporting from Germany as a 2019 Arthur F. Burns Fellow, a program of the International Center for Journalists.
Wamsley earned a B.A. with highest honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Wamsley holds a master's degree from Ohio University, where she was a Public Media Fellow and worked at NPR Member station WOUB. A native of Athens, Ohio, she now lives and bikes in Washington, DC.
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Attorneys have made their closing arguments in the case of the former Minnesota police officer, who fatally killed Daunte Wright. The case is now in the hands of the jury. -
After a little more than five hours debating the charges, the jury went home for the night without reaching a verdict. -
The cost of many foods — especially beef, pork and poultry — is rising fast, largely due to supply chain issues. For many, that can mean hard decisions at the grocery store.
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A new poll finds more than 55% of Black and Latino households have faced serious financial problems in recent months. And more than a quarter have depleted their savings. -
As religious exemptions are now being sought in droves, their use raises concerns that they pose a serious public health risk. But some say vaccine mandates are too much, too soon. -
There's new urgency to get billions of dollars in federal rental assistance to tenants and landlords. Memphis, without an eviction ban since July, has figured out some things that work. -
The CDC's new, more limited eviction moratorium may help it survive legal challenges. President Biden is pushing states to quickly distribute federal aid to the millions of renters who need it. -
In an outbreak in Provincetown, Mass., three-quarters of cases occurred in fully vaccinated people. The study's findings suggest that vaccinated people infected with delta variant can transmit the virus. -
The city surpassed a record that had been set a day earlier, notching more than 3,000 new cases on Tuesday. For the first time in four days, no Olympic athletes tested positive for the coronavirus. -
Los Angeles joins California, New York City and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced new, more stringent policies, and possible penalties, to push vaccination among their employees.
