Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.
As director of journalism, I work on things like newsroom strategy, culture, ethics, and training; I work with reporters (mainly climate reporter Rachel McDevitt) on stories; and I'm deeply involved with our community engagement efforts and collaborations with other news organizations.
My roots in journalism go back to growing up outside Washington, D.C., reading Woodward and Bernstein in my hometown paper, and being drawn to the ideals of freedom of the press and holding the powerful to account. I also idolized the Postās sports columnists, and in fact was a sports reporter/editor before I moved to news.
I followed journalismās call to the University of Missouri, then to jobs in Virginia and Maryland before landing in Pennsylvania, and Iāve lived near Gettysburg for more than two decades. Living in rural Pa. helps inform my work as a journalist and my belief that listening is one of the most important things we can do.
If Iām not doing journalism stuff, I may be traveling, bird-watching, or both.
Ralph Wilson / AP Photo
In this April 23, 2010 photo, a Chesapeake Energy natural gas well site is seen near Burlington, Pa., in Bradford County.
Courtesy Columbia Global Reports
Bethany McLean, author of “Saudi America: The truth about fracking and how it’s changing the world”
Author Bethany McLean was “fascinated” by former CEO and co-founder of Chesapeake Energy, Aubrey McClendon, and his role in the rise of the fracking industry. That fascination is part of what led to her book “Saudi America: The truth about fracking and how it’s changing the world.”
McLean, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, peered into the business side of fracking and found an industry that is moving “astonishing” amounts of money but isn’t as financially strong as it might seem.
“McClendon’s Chesapeake is also the example of just how much cash these enterprises, these fracking enterprises, can burn through and how financially weak they can be despite this idea that they are changing the world,” McLean says in the podcast. “That conundrum was really interesting to me.”
In this episode of StateImpact Pennsylvania’s podcast “energy, explained,” McLean talks to StateImpact’s Susan Phillips about the book, the fracking industry and topics including why McLean says there is “no such thing” asĀ American energy independence, and how that concept could pose a long-term threat to U.S. energy leadership. Listen here:
StateImpact Pennsylvania is a collaboration among WITF, WHYY, and the Allegheny Front. Reporters Reid Frazier, Rachel McDevitt and Susan PhillipsĀ cover the commonwealth’s energy economy. Read their reports on this site, and hear them on public radio stations across Pennsylvania.
Climate Solutions, a collaboration of news organizations, educational institutions and a theater company, uses engagement, education and storytelling to help central Pennsylvanians toward climate change literacy, resilience and adaptation. Our work will amplify how people are finding solutions to the challenges presented by a warming world.
McLean, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, peered into the business side of fracking and found an industry that is moving “astonishing” amounts of money but isn’t as financially strong as it might seem.
