Our Staff

Steve Beatty, Editor

beatty mug1-crop Beatty, a veteran investigative journalist, is editor of The Lens. He worked as an editor for The Times-Picayune for 15 years, leaving New Orleans just before Katrina to take a position as an editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and quickly rising through the ranks to be an editor of the newspaper’s watchdog investigative team. He returned to New Orleans in May of 2009. Before joining The Lens, Beatty worked as an investigative reporter for The Pelican Institute, a public policy think tank.

Phone: (504) 655-2375
Email: sbeatty@thelensnola.org
Twitter: @beattylensnola

Tyler Bridges, Staff Writer

tyler-bridges-headshot Bridges covers Louisiana politics and public policy. He returned to New Orleans in late 2012 after spending the previous year as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, where he studied digital journalism. Prior to that, he spent 13 years as a reporter for the Miami Herald, covering state government, city of Miami government, national politics and several years as a South America-based correspondent for the newspaper. Before the Herald, he spent seven years at The Times-Picayune.

Bridges’ coverage during his years in New Orleans led to two books: “The Rise of David Duke” (University Press of Mississippi, 1994) and “Bad Bet on the Bayou: The Rise of Gambling in Louisiana and the Fall of Governor Edwin Edwards” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001). Bridges has won a slew of local and national journalistic awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes as a member of reporting teams at the Miami Herald. He grew up in Palo Alto and graduated from Stanford, where he was a trombone player in the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band. Tyler is an avid fan of the San Francisco Giants and the San Francisco 49ers.

Phone: (504) 810-6222
Email: tegbridges@gmail.com
Twitter: @tegbridges

Rebecca Catalanello, Charter Schools Editor

Rebecca Catalanello joined The Lens in December 2012 as editor for The Lens’ Charter Schools Reporting Corps project. A New Orleans native and graduate of Benjamin Franklin High School, Catalanello spent much of her 15-year newspaper career covering K-12 education. For nine years prior to joining The Lens, she worked at the St. Petersburg Times (now called the Tampa Bay Times), where she wrote about school boards, homeschoolers, crime, state politics and virtual education, among other things. She helped cover Hurricane Katrina for the Times in 2005 and, in subsequent years, wrote from her hometown about New Orleanians’ efforts to rebuild.

Her work has been recognized by the Education Writers Association, the Alabama Associated Press Managing Editors and her beloved Aunt Lynnie. Since moving back to New Orleans with her husband, Lens Managing Editor Steve Myers, Catalanello can be found on any given weekend trailing her toddler around the city’s playgrounds and other great New Orleans kiddie haunts.

Phone: (504) 315-5163
Email: rcatalanello@TheLensNola.org
Twitter: @RCatNola
Facebook: Charter School Reporting Corps

Karen Gadbois, Co-founder and Staff Writer

karen-gadbois-headshot Gadbois co-founded The Lens. For her work with television reporter Lee Zurik exposing widespread misuse of city recovery funds — which led to guilty pleas in federal court — Gadbois won some of the highest honors in journalism, including a Peabody Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and a gold medal from Investigative Reporters and Editors.

In 2012 she was awarded the Ethics in Journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists for her reporting on the NOPD’s policy of publicizing the criminal records of homicide victims. She now covers New Orleans government issues and covers land use issues for the Squandered Heritage portion of The Lens.

Phone: (504) 606-6013
Email: kgadbois@thelensnola.org
Twitter: @gadboislensnola

Jed Horne, News Editor

jed-horne-headshot News Editor Jed Horne is a veteran journalist who was awarded a Pulitzer Prize as part of the Times-Picayune team that covered Katrina and the recovery. He is the author of “Desire Street” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005) and “Breach of Faith” (Random House, 2006, 2008), which was declared “the best of the Katrina books” on NPR. He has been interviewed by TV and radio pundits including Rachel Maddow, Bill O’Reilly, Terry Gross, Amy Goodman, Charlie Rose and Tavis Smiley.

Phone: (504) 864-3156
Email: jhorne@thelensnola.org
Twitter: @hornelensnola

Charles Maldonado, Staff Writer

maldonado head shot Maldonado is The Lens’ government accountability reporter, covering the city of New Orleans and other local government bodies. He previously worked for Gambit, New Orleans’ alternative newsweekly, where he covered city hall, criminal justice and public health. Before moving to New Orleans, he covered state and local government for weekly papers in Nashville. In Knoxville, Tenn., Maldonado received numerous awards for his reporting of a billion-gallon coal ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant. A native of Detroit, Maldonado and his wife are expecting their first child.

Phone: (504) 229-2346
Email: cmaldonado@thelensnola.org
Twitter: @chmaldonado

Bob Marshall, Staff Writer

bob-marshall-headshot Marshall covers environmental issues for The Lens, with a special focus on coastal restoration and wetlands. While at The Times-Picayune, his work chronicling the people, stories and issues of Louisiana’s wetlands was recognized with two Pulitzer Prizes, the John H. Oakes Prize for Distinguished Environmental Reporting from Columbia University, the Keck Award for best science reporting from The National Academies of Sciences, and top honors from the Society of Professional Journalists, Associated Press, United Press International and Scripps-Howard Foundation National Journalism Awards.

In 2012 Marshall was a member of the inaugural class inducted into the Loyola University School of Communications Den of Distinction. Since 2008 he has been the journalism instructor at the iei Media summer program at the University of Urbino, Italy.

Marshall lives in New Orleans with his wife, Marie Gould, founder of Louisiana Lost Lands Environmental Education Tours.

Phone: (504) 232-5013
Email: bmarshall@thelensnola.org
Twitter: BobMTheLensNola

Mark Moseley, Engagement Specialist/Opinion Writer

moseley In 2004 Moseley stopped yelling at his TV and began a New Orleans blog called Your Right Hand Thief. After Katrina and the Federal Flood he helped create the Rising Tide conference, which grew into an annual social media event dedicated to the future of New Orleans. Moseley’s background is in business and philosophy. In 2010 he jumped at the chance to become The Lens’ opinion writer, and now also writes The Lens daily newsletter.

Phone: (504) 481-5407
Email: mmoseley@thelensnola.org
Twitter: @moseleylensnola

Anne Mueller, Development Director

anne-mueller-headshot Development Director Anne Mueller, a native New Orleanian, learned about the richness of her city through attending elementary school in the French Quarter and in recent years at the Crescent City Farmers Market selling her dad’s German bread. She received a degree in history from Bennington College and a master’s in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. With more than 15 years of fundraising experience, her professional experience covers a broad range of areas including annual giving, board development, event planning and research. Through her professional and volunteer projects, Anne is committed to the ongoing revitalization of New Orleans.

Phone: (504) 258-1624
Email: amueller@thelensnola.org
Twitter: @muellerlensnola.org

Steve Myers, Managing Editor

myers-mugshot-crop Myers is managing editor of The Lens. Before joining the staff in September 2012, Myers was managing editor of Poynter Online, the preeminent source of news and training about the journalism industry. At Poynter, he wrote about emerging media practices such as citizen journalism, nonprofit news sites, real-time reporting via social media, data-oriented news apps, iPhoneography, and the fact-checking movement. He spent about 10 years at newspapers, including six years as a local government reporter in Mobile, Ala. While there, he focused on local government accountability, from jail management to hurricane preparation and response. He was a 2006 Ohio State University Kiplinger Fellow and an Open Society Institute Katrina Media Fellow.

Phone: (504) 298-9750
Email: smyers@thelensnola.org
Twitter: @myersnews

Jessica Williams, Staff Writer

jessica-williams-headshot Education reporter Jessica Williams covers notable happenings in the city’s loosely organized collection of public schools. In 2011 she was recognized by the Press Club of New Orleans for her reporting on charter school transparency and governance. She was part of a team that received a 2012 National Edward R. Murrow Award for their coverage on a New Orleans family’s recovery after Hurricane Katrina. She’s a proud graduate of Orleans Parish Public Schools, and she obtained her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Loyola University New Orleans. Before joining The Lens, she wrote for New Orleans CityBusiness, The Gambit, Edible New Orleans, and New Orleans Magazine, among others.