Core Team
Lynette Clemetson
Program Director
Lynette Clemetson started in January of 2012 as director of StateImpact, overseeing the journalism and collaboration efforts of the team and serving as a primary point of contact for station managers. Throughout her career, Clemetson has distinguished herself as a traditional and digital journalist specializing in online strategy and entrepreneurial journalism. She served as a domestic correspondent covering political, social, and cultural issues at The New York Times and was the founding managing editor of TheRoot.com, a leading online source of news and commentary that was launched in 2008. Before joining The New York Times, Clemetson worked as a national and international correspondent for Newsweek magazine.
John Stefany
Project Manager
John coordinates StateImpact project work at NPR, including strategy, day-to-day operations and technical platform support. He brings to StateImpact a background in both news and project management. He worked as a political editor, data journalist and investigative editor before developing expertise in digital systems implementation at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. He’s managed teams of developers, designers, reporters and editors that have created content management systems and interactive news applications. He is a PMP-certified project manager.
Christopher Swope
Editorial Coordinator
Chris works with StateImpact’s reporters to ensure their stories are deeply reported, richly told and impactful. He guides states in hiring, training and editing reporters and helps promote the project on NPR.org. Chris joined NPR from the Pew Center on the States, where he was editor of the daily news service Stateline.org. Before joining Stateline, he spent 12 years with Governing magazine, rising from staff writer to associate editor to managing editor.
Ken Rudin
Editorial Coordinator, Broadcast
Ken works with stations to hire, train and edit reporters at StateImpact stations. Ken, who first came to NPR in 1991 as political editor, has been covering politics for more than 25 years and brings a wealth of radio reporting and editing experience to the team. Ken provides on-air campaign analysis, has edited NPR political reporters and worked closely with stations and station reporters on political coverage. He makes regular appearances on Talk of the Nation and the It’s All Politics podcast, and writes the weekly Political Junkie column. He is deeply experienced at coaching reporters new to political coverage and helping them find the right balance and sourcing on their stories.
Jessica Pupovac
Data and Digital Coordinator
Jessica oversees data journalism efforts at StateImpact, helping train and guide reporters in finding and sharing the untold stories of state government using data and public records. Before coming to StateImpact, she honed her skills as a data librarian for the National Institute for Computer Assisted Reporting. She’s reported, trained and edited reporters at several publications in Chicago and has a master’s degree in investigative reporting from the Missouri School of Journalism.
Becky Lettenberger
Multimedia Trainer
Becky works closely with station reporters and the StateImpact team to ensure strong visual and multimedia presentation across our sites. Becky joined NPR in 2009 as part of a Knight-funded digital training effort, in which she helped facilitate and train more than 300 NPR reporters, producers, editors and managers. She’s also part of the multimedia production team, coordinating daily news visuals for NPR.org, producing multimedia projects and providing on-going training and support.
Danny DeBelius
User Experience Designer
Danny is responsible for the information architecture, design, prototypes, and front-end development that form the basis of the overall StateImpact user experience. Danny joined StateImpact from the Las Vegas Sun, where he was a senior web designer. While there, Danny was part of a team that won several national awards for “Do No Harm”, a series and multi-platform investigation on hospital care. Previously, he worked as a designer at The Rocky Mountain News.
