About

My name is Kate. I’m an investigative reporter covering energy and the environment for The Maine Monitor. Before that, I was a reporter for The Ellsworth American, covering everything from the finances of the local hospital to the effects of a shifting recycling market and people who grow mushrooms in the woods. I also ran the paper’s newsletters, including the Weekly Bulletin, which I started in 2019 and ran for two years.

I’ve won awards from the New England Newspaper Association and Maine Press Association for my work covering environmental issues, such as where your recycling really winds up, investigative stories on the Nazi next door and how businesses in the region are coping with the labor shortage.

I’ve written longer pieces for Arkansas Life Magazine on one family’s journey from Guatemala to Bentonville, on cruise ship emissions for The Brooklyn Ink and for The Memory Project on Dan Eldon, a journalist who was killed in Somalia in the 1990s.

I graduated with honors from Columbia Journalism School (M.S.) and magna cum laude from Bryn Mawr College (B.A.), and spent a semester in medical school at the University of New England before leaving to pursue journalism. I also completed a 10-week intensive data training program at Columbia, the Lede Program, where I learned Python, SQL, JSON, web scraping with BeautifulSoup, how to work with APIs and a whole lot more.

In other fun facts, I spent four years living aboard my sailboat on the coast of Maine and rode a bicycle from Portugal to Zanzibar. I speak basic Italian and understand enough French to know when people are talking about me.

You can read more of my work here or here.

I live in Maine with my husband and dogs. I’m always interested in new projects. Get in touch at kaitlin.cough@gmail.com.