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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Workers at the Port of Baltimore are losing their jobs because of the bridge collapse. With no ships coming in and out, it is unclear when workers will be able be returning to their jobs.
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The Key Bridge collapse is upending life for countless people in the Chesapeake region. Residents say it's not just infrastructure — it's their identity as people who live close to the water. -
The rules that dictate what can be built and where were often meant to be exclusionary, experts say. With homes too few and rents too high, many cities are loosening rules to encourage more housing.
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As Americans struggle to find affordable housing, cities are realizing their own rules have made it too hard and expensive to build the homes they need. Now, some cities are trying to change that. -
Washington, D.C.'s mayor has urged the Biden administration to require federal employees to return to the office most days. She's ordered her own city's workers back to the office four days a week.
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Around the country, cities are throwing out their own parking requirements, hoping to end up with less parking – and more affordable housing, better transit, and walkable neighborhoods. -
Protesters gathered at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in the nation's capital on Saturday.
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As the fighting intensifies between Israel and Hamas militants, at least 24 Americans have died in the conflict. Others are missing. We speak to some of the family members and friends.
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This week's ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the resulting turmoil on Capitol Hill has made for some very timely discussions in high school civics classes.
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Spain's World Cup victory was supposed to be a moment of triumph, but it was overshadowed when the head of the country's soccer federation planted an unwanted kiss on one of the team's star players.
