Celeste Bott Email & Phone Number

Greater Chicago Area

• Writing at least two stories per day that reach thousands of readers while covering and tracking civil lawsuits and criminal cases in the state and federal courts in Illinois.
• Meeting numerous daily deadlines while also working on long-term projects and features, maintaining excellent time management skills to juggle live court coverage with writing, legal research, tracking dockets, and.
• Collaborating with other reporters and teams across numerous other news wires to ensure the best coverage possible.
• Extensive experience reporting on cases in the following areas of law: cybersecurity and privacy, white collar, antitrust, personal injury, medical malpractice, real estate, legal ethics and malpractice, securities.
• Seeing cases through from their filing to trial, reporting on all stages of the case including discovery disputes, dismissal and summary judgment briefing and more.
• Experience covering dozens of jury and bench trials in state and federal courts.

Greater St. Louis Area

• Covered national, state and local politics for the newspaper, in both the paper's Missouri Capitol bureau and the St. Louis City Hall bureau.
• Coverage included the 2016 and 2018 elections, the brief tenure and ultimate resignation of ex-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, the bills and issues debated by both the Missouri Legislature and the St. Louis Board of.
• Creator and key contributor to Tipping Point, a multi-part, award-winning series on blight in St. Louis.
• Regularly hosted and appeared on the paper's podcast, Inside the Post-Dispatch.
• Regularly appeared on Post-Scripts, a weekly segment at Fox 2 St. Louis, to provide political analysis.
• Edited, supervised and mentored interns during their internships at the paper's Jefferson City capital bureau.

Springfield, Illinois Area

• Covered the Illinois Legislature, the governor, and state agencies as all were faced with a record-setting budget impasse.
• Was relied upon to work long hours into the night covering debates on bills considered by the Illinois legislature and break news quickly upon passage or defeat.
• Wrote about bills from their introduction, to their passage in committee, to their approval by lawmakers and signature from Illinois' governor.
• Covered the 2016 election, including numerous political rallies for President Donald Trump.

Washington D.C. Metro Area

• Wrote, reported and copy-edited longform stories for the monthly magazine.
• Was part of a three-member team that sought to overhaul and modernize the publication's marketing strategy.
• Revamped the magazine's social media management, writing and scheduling tweets and posts and boosting readership of its content and visitors to its website.

Lansing, Michigan Area

• Oversaw the publication of a daily 20-page newspaper serving not just the Michigan State community and student body but the greater East Lansing/Lansing area.
• Hired, supervised and trained a staff of more than 50 student journalists, acting as a leader of the editorial, photography, and design desks. Also handled all payroll, scheduling/time off, and disciplinary actions if.
• Edited every story, down to the photo captions, that appeared in the newspaper and on the State News website.
• Conducted daily meetings with editors to plan upcoming publications, event coverage, photo shoots and multimedia production.
• Created an entirely new filing and copy-editing process as the paper transitioned from broadsheet to tabloid for the first time since its founding more than 100 years ago.
• Overhauled the process for training and onboarding student journalists and interns.

Lansing, Michigan Area

• Reported on all branches of Michigan state government and filed stories on multiple legislative elections.
• Covered legislative committee hearings and reported on new bills filed and debated before those bodies.
• Edited and put together a daily political newsletter for Gongwer, including its own updates and aggregated political clips from Michigan and national news outlets.

• Acted as an independent contributor analyzing and writing about state policy, including PAC funding for state universities.

Lansing, Michigan Area

• Reported environmental news for the Great Lakes Basin.
• Acted as the outlet's social media manager, marketing stories on Twitter and other social media websites.
• Conducted environment reporting research in the Communications Arts and Sciences field and presented that research at MSU's University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum.

Lansing, Michigan Area

• Reported on the state capital for 20+ Michigan newspapers.

Bachelor'S Degree, Journalism

Master’S Degree, Public Affairs Reporting

Education record