Abbey Marshall is a local government and politics reporter/producer at Cleveland’s NPR affiliate, Ideastream Public Media/WKSU. In addition to covering day-to-day happenings at City Hall, she takes a closer look at how politics affect people’s everyday lives. She frequently covers issues of equity, diversity and inclusion, including housing, community, LGBTQ+ issues and more.
She previously worked at the Akron Beacon Journal, part of the USA Today network, where she also covered local government in Akron, Ohio. She wrote about a variety of issues, including the fatal police shooting of Jayland Walker and subsequent protests, abortion access after the implementation of Ohio’s heartbeat bill, housing issues for low-income residents, urban planning, city budgets and more.
Prior to the Beacon Journal, she reported in Akron at The Devil Strip, a cooperatively-owned community magazine and online publication, covering economic development via Report for America from June 2020-October 2021, when the publication folded. An initiative of The GroundTruth Project, Report for America combats the crisis of collapsing local journalism by partnering journalists with newsrooms that strengthen communities through reporting and service projects. She is also a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) and the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing (SABEW).
As a freelance writer, her work appeared in The Lily, a national publication from The Washington Post, POLITICO and The Athens Messenger, a rural county daily in Appalachian Ohio.
A 2020 graduate of Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, she studied journalism in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism with a French minor and visual communications specialization. She was the recipient of the Wood Cutler Scholar Award, a four-year, full merit scholarship with additional enrichment opportunities including outdoor leadership, service internship, international experience and professional internship.
In addition to other collegiate work, Abbey attended the 2019 WHCA Dinner as a White House Correspondents’ Association Scholar. Abbey also worked as an editorial intern at POLITICO, where she covered politics and breaking news.
She previously at The Columbus Dispatch in summers 2018 and 2019 as a metro reporter and web producer, respectively, running social media handles, tracking analytics, writing for web and covering a variety of issues and breaking news in the capital of Ohio.
She also worked as a communications intern in summer 2017 for Magic Bus India, a nonprofit based in Mumbai focused on activity-based education and gender equality, where she spent a majority of her summer interviewing and sharing the stories of young girls growing up in poverty and their community work.
In her free time, she enjoys hiking with her dog, rock climbing, performing in local theater and creative writing. She is currently in a local production of Reefer Madness and working on a book of short stories.