The Maine Monitor last week welcomed its third Report for America corps member, a public health investigative reporter. Rose Lundy will cover coronavirus response and recovery for our editorial product, with an emphasis on rural and vulnerable Maine communities.
Lundy most recently served three years as a local government and politics reporter for The Daily News in southwest Washington. She covered two city councils, two state legislative districts and one congressional district. As part of a small newsroom, she also chipped in to cover business, industry, crime, the environment and quirky community events like Longview’s rodent-themed Squirrel Fest.
Lundy, 26, won a social issues reporting award from the Northwest Society of Professional Journalists for her 2018 story about mobile home park landlords allegedly price gouging and intimidating low-income senior citizens.
At the outbreak of COVID-19 earlier this year, Lundy switched to covering the pandemic’s impact on local businesses, governments and individuals. Between March and May, she wrote 46 stories about the coronavirus.
“We have added four full-time journalists in the last year thanks to our individual donors and supporters and through growing partnerships with organizations like Report for America,” said Dan Dinsmore, Executive Director of the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting and Publisher of the Maine Monitor. “Rose is exactly the type of journalist we need now in Maine. She is someone who approaches her reporting with inquisitiveness, caution and dogged determination. I believe her reporting on the impact of COVID-19 will be highly valuable to all Mainers.”
Lundy, one of the 225 Report for America corps members selected this year, will have additional responsibilities, including a community service project related to journalism. RFA is a national program that deploys passionate and idealistic journalists in local communities to fill gaps in coverage that widened as the industry contracted.
Lundy grew up in Minnesota and earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin. When she was 19, she spent a memorable summer guiding a high school trail crew in Alaska’s Wrangell-St. Elias National Park as part of Americorps and the Student Conservation Association.
