About Mandy

I am a journalist, nerd, wife and friend to animals.

This past spring, I started as Social News Editor for The Huffington Post, which is a very exciting transition from local to national news, focusing specifically on politics coming up on the 2012 election cycle. I also am part of a team managing OfftheBus, the HuffPosts’s citizen journalism program centered on covering election news.

All of my views expressed here, of course, have nothing to do with my news organization of employment, though I will talk about what I’m working on – I’ll try to keep it educational.

I moved to Washington, D.C. in 2010 to take a job as the social media producer for TBD, a  local news start-up that launched in August 2010 (and subsequently eliminated my job six months later).  I wrote a lot about TBD’s ideas and happenings in the time I was there, so check that out if you’d like.

I could go into all my professional history before this point, but instead I’ll just refer you to my resumé for the gritty details. I’ve been working in online news my entire career so far, so you’ll see no rueful reminiscing about ink-stained fingers here.

I received my B.S. in journalism at Kent State University, where I feel I learned what it really means to be a journalist at the Daily Kent Stater. I liked KSU so much that I stuck around to get a Master’s in media management two years later on a fellowship with WKSU (NPR). It was then when I really caught the online bug and starting filling my brain with multimedia skills. If I hadn’t stayed in school, I’d probably still be trying to get a job as a reporter.

Today, I’m living in SE D.C. with my husband, Ben Fischer, and our cats. Ben’s also a journalist – working as a reporter for the Washington Business Journal.

It’s laughable to call what I do in my free time “hobbies” – as I spend most of it on the computer or my iPhone while watching TV or hanging out at bars or eating. I am almost never not online – and someday I’ll need therapy for it, I’m sure.