Julia Shanahan
Julia Shanahan will join the Rappahannock News staff in June.
The Rappahannock News announced online last week that reporter Julia Shanahan will join its news team as a full-time Report for America corps member beginning in June.
A 2021 graduate of the University of Iowa with bachelor’s degrees in journalism and political science, Shanahan has won several awards for her reporting from the Iowa Newspaper Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Collegiate Press. In 2020, she was named a finalist for national Reporter of the Year from the Associated Collegiate Press.
In her role as a reporter and politics editor for The Daily Iowan, the student-run newspaper at the University of Iowa, Shanahan covered Iowa state politics, mental health and rural affairs. One of her most impactful projects told the story of Janelle Lutgen, an Iowa woman who had lost her 32-year-old son as a result of insulin price increases.
Janelle Lutgen’s son, Jesse, had Type 1 diabetes. When Jesse Lutgen lost his job in the winter of 2017, he also lost his health insurance. Lutgen died three months later because he couldn’t afford to buy the lifesaving drug he needed.
“Using Lutgen’s story, I was able to put a human face to policy coming out of the state legislature and federal government, and I interviewed our U.S. Senator, Chuck Grassley,” Shanahan wrote in her application to Report for America. “The story received a lot of attention around the state, and I was really proud to have been trusted with Janelle Lutgen’s personal story.”
In the summer of 2020, Shanahan held a news internship with the Pennsylvania Legislative Correspondents’ Association covering the state legislature. Last year she interviewed then-presidential candidate Joe Biden as part of her coverage of the 2020 election.
Shanahan’s addition to the Rappahannock News has been made possible by a collaboration with Foothills Forum, which has supported fact-based, in-depth journalism in Rappahannock County since 2015, and the organization Report for America, a national service program which places talented emerging journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues and communities.
“I want to be a Report for America corps member because I really value community journalism,” Shanahan wrote. “From my experience covering state government and presidential campaigns, I’ve seen firsthand how politics and policymaking impacts small communities.”
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This year, Report for America placed more than 300 journalists in 200 newsrooms across the contiguous United States, Puerto Rico and Guam. With more than 45 percent of the corps identifying as journalists of color, this year’s cohort is more than twice as diverse as most U.S. newsrooms.
“[Report for America] is a great program which has helped us provide more local news coverage,” said Dennis Brack, publisher of the Rappahannock News. “Julia is an accomplished young journalist who is committed to community reporting. We look forward to welcoming her to Rappahannock County and the Rapp News team.”
Readers can help support the Rappahannock News’ Report for America position here.
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