Christine Schiavo joins IRP as local news editor

(Berkeley, CA) — We’re pleased to announce that Christine Schiavo is joining Berkeley Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program as local news editor.

In this new role, Schiavo will be leading coverage of Berkeley Journalism’s two community news sites,  Richmond Confidential and Oakland North. She will work closely with journalism students to produce a broad range of stories about issues of vital importance to Richmond and Oakland and develop investigative projects. She begins Jan. 11.

Schiavo comes to the IRP from The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where she was senior content editor for enterprise and investigations since 2007. In that role, she assigned and edited the stories of about 30 reporters. Three investigative projects she directed won the Pennsylvania News Media Association’s G. Richard Dew public service award, including an investigation of a 2011 gas explosion that killed five people and destroyed half a city block.

Her long journalism career also includes seven years as a general assignment reporter at The Morning Call and six years as a reporter at The Philadelphia Inquirer, covering breaking news, crime, courts and investigations. She got her start at a daily newspaper as a reporter at The Sentinel in Fairmont, Minnesota.

Schiavo has also taught courses in news writing, reporting and editing as an adjunct instructor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for the past two decades.

“Christine has devoted her career to local news,” said David Barstow, head of the IRP and the Logan Distinguished Chair in Investigative Journalism. “Her reporters adore her, and she has shown again and again that great investigative reporting often springs from covering the school board, or the zoning commission, or in one especially noteworthy example: the working conditions inside the local Amazon warehouse.”

“I have an instinctive indignation that springs from witnessing injustice, corruption, and an uneven playing field,” said Schiavo. “I look forward to nurturing that indignation in the next generation of journalists at Berkeley.”