Frontline and Front-Page Work: UNC Asheville Alumni Make an Impact During Worldwide Pandemic

What's Working from Home: Alumni Edition

By UNC Asheville

March 30^th, 2020

From the frontlines of healthcare work to the front pages of investigative journalism, UNC Asheville alumni are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with their own expertise and experience. We’ll be bringing you their stories, along with the stories of our continued UNC Asheville community, knowing that we are Bulldogs, wherever we are.

Each day, Jennifer Forsyth ’90 leads a team of reporters, data analysts, news researchers, a videographer, a graphic designer and even an engineer in her role as deputy chief of investigations at the Wall Street Journal. In 2019, the team won a Pulitzer Prize for their work on the “Trump’s Hush Money” series that investigated the president’s role in secret payoffs. Now they are turning their attention and their specialized skillset to coverage of COVID-19.

Like the rest of the world, the 1,200 WSJ staff members are working remotely – relying on cell phones and video call technology to connect. Forsyth’s team still focuses on investigative stories, such as the reasons for the limited supply of COVID-19 tests and how one nursing home in Washington missed an opportunity to launch a more aggressive response, and they are still going in-depth in the reporting even from afar.

For Forsyth, this set-up isn’t new. Two years ago, she started leading the team remotely, moving her home-base and home office to Asheville, close to where she grew up in Hendersonville and where she completed her undergraduate degree at UNC Asheville with a major in history with a minor in German. After graduating from UNC Asheville she traveled to Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship, and earned a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Frontline and Front-Page Work: UNC Asheville Alumni Make an Impact During Worldwide Pandemic

“The greater milieu of liberal arts education is amazingly useful right now,” she says. “I’ve studied European history and read literature that all seems to apply, like Camus’ ‘The Plague’ and Follett’s ‘World Without End.’ I have that voracious love of learning, and I want to understand my world and help my journalists each day."

Her love of history is housed in her home office, visible in the many books that line the shelves across from her desk, including many on the subject of World War I, which was her focus as an undergraduate. The narrow but well-lit space is painted a tranquil blue-green color and features a central pendant lamp in a brilliant shade of blue from local crafter Lexington Glassworks. Forsyth’s essential items include a supportive desk chair and glasses made for computer screen reading. She spends a lot of time here.

She also notes that it took three weeks to a month to first settle into the space and new work-from-home setup.

“It was disorienting. I was nervous at first that I wouldn’t be able to pull it off, and I questioned, ‘How do I make sure they won’t forget me or worse yet, think that I’m not working,’” she recalls.

She calls in frequently, checks in with her team, and continues to help them get the tough stories, from how to get the information they need, find individuals to talk about it, and source the documents to illuminate the information. She also balances her day with time at the gym (when it’s open), and a real lunch break, even if the kitchen is just a few steps away from her desk. Then, the work continues.

“The techniques are still the same,” she says of the investigative reporting during COVID-19. “What’s different is that we can’t go talk to anyone in person. We are now using smartphones and Zoom,… but this type of hardware and software skews to the middle class and upper class, and it’s going to be an enormous challenge to reach the most vulnerable and most likely to be harmed.”

To read more of Forsyth’s work, as the team continues to pursue the topic and overcome the challenges, visit https://www.wsj.com/.

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