100 Days in Appalachia
Ashton Marra is a co-founder and co-director at Reporting on Addiction since September 2021, while also serving as a teaching assistant professor at West Virginia University and as executive editor at 100 Days in Appalachia. Previous experience includes the role of stateImpact Ohio education reporter/producer at ideastream from September 2017 to July 2018, and as assistant news director and statehouse reporter at West Virginia Public Broadcasting from October 2012 to August 2017. Ashton has also contributed to ABC News as a production associate for Good Morning America and interned at WDTV 5 News as a reporter, focusing on diverse news topics across North Central West Virginia. Ashton holds a Master’s degree in Integrated Marketing Communications and a Bachelor of Science in Broadcast Journalism from West Virginia University, with initial studies in Broadcast Journalism at Marshall University.
This person is not in any teams
100 Days in Appalachia
The 2016 election revealed the deep social, economic and political fractures stressing communities —and American discourse — to the breaking point. While the nation’s growing rural/urban divide attracts a global audience and a steady stream of analysis in the election’s aftermath, in Appalachia we are no strangers to the issues at hand. We are these communities. “100 Days in Appalachia” is an experimental project designed to burst the filter bubble of social news and to narrate the new American landscape from within the heart of a region dubbed "Trump Nation" 100 days at a time. We'll tell the political, economic and human stories of communities that are more complex than national narratives have allowed. This is a collaborative project from West Virginia University's Reed College of Media, West Virginia Public Broadcasting and The Daily Yonder.