Vanessa Romo
Vanessa Romo is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She covers breaking news on a wide range of topics, weighing in daily on everything from immigration and the treatment of migrant children, to a war-crimes trial where a witness claimed he was the actual killer, to an alleged sex cult. She has also covered the occasional cat-clinging-to-the-hood-of-a-car story.
Before her stint on the News Desk, Romo spent the early months of the Trump Administration on the Washington Desk covering stories about culture and politics – the voting habits of the post-millennial generation, the rise of Maxine Waters as a septuagenarian pop culture icon and DACA quinceañeras as Trump protests.
In 2016, she was at the core of the team that launched and produced The New York Times' first political podcast, The Run-Up with Michael Barbaro. Prior to that, Romo was a Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University's School of Journalism where she began working on a radio documentary about a pilot program in Los Angeles teaching black and Latino students to code switch.
Romo has also traveled extensively through the Member station world in California and Washington. As the education reporter at Southern California Public Radio, she covered the region's K-12 school districts and higher education institutions and won the Education Writers Association first place award as well as a Regional Edward R. Murrow for Hard News Reporting.
Before that, she covered business and labor for Member station KNKX, keeping an eye on global companies including Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft.
A Los Angeles native, she is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University, where she received a degree in history. She also earned a master's degree in Journalism from NYU. She loves all things camaron-based.
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Media coverage of Griner's arrest on alleged drug charges in Russia has remained somewhat muted. Some say it's because of her skin color, but others say it's part of a bigger strategy to get her home. -
It took women working year round full-time jobs 74 extra days to earn what men did in 2021. And the data is worse for women of color, who are disproportionately employed in low-wage jobs. -
Building on SB 8 in Texas, some Republican lawmakers are trying a new strategy: pushing bills that would attempt to limit what residents can and can't do even beyond state lines. -
Company leaders explained vehement opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. They also hope the new name will represent "Stoli's roots in Latvia."
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The palm-sized spider, which has been largely confined to the Southeastern states for nearly a decade, could soon colonize regions with colder climates to the north. But they're harmless to humans. -
The lawsuit says at least one family is already under investigation for providing their child with medically necessary gender-affirming care. -
The 1909 painting was just one of a treasured art collection inherited by Robert Lewenstein and his wife Irma Klein, But the pair were forced to sell it in October 1940 as they fled the Nazis.
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New research out of New York found the protection of the vaccine against infection in kids ages 5 to 11 dropped from 68% to 12%. -
"All I could think was that it wasn't me," Bethany Farber told NPR. "I just kept insisting that they check ... that they double-check because they had the wrong person." She spent 13 days in jail. -
"This was probably the most difficult Olympics of all time," NBC Sports Chairman Pete Bevacqua said, citing "very harsh protocols in China" because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
