Penelope Overton Email & Phone Number

Award-winning journalist with more than 15 years experience delivering crisp, compelling, in-depth stories about government, the environment, and ethnic communities. Specialize in covering clandestine, obscure, or little-known topics and communities.

Listed skills include Journalism, Newspapers, Storytelling, Feature Articles, and 15 others.

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  Reporter

  Portland Press Herald

  May 2016 - Present - Portland, Maine Area

  Conceive, report and write daily, enterprise and in-depth news stories, features and video reports for the state's largest newspaper about Maine's iconic $1.4 billion a year lobster industry and its medical and recreational cannabis industry. Organize, moderate live public events for Maine Cannabis Report. Frequent TV, radio and podcast guest.*Investigation into heroin use in the Maine lobster industry, which is claiming the lives of deckhands and captains, triggering an uptick of fishing violations as addicts struggle to pay off drug debts, and threatening the economies of Maine's small coastal fishing towns. *Chronicled the collapse of Maine’s hemp industry, revealing how even the state's most successful growers have gone bankrupt because they can't find a profitable way to get the cannabidiol inside the plant to market.*Pulled back the curtain on Maine's cannabis gifting trade, where entrepreneurs skirt the regulated market by giving pot away to adults who pay for a companion item, like delivery.*Revealed widespread mismanagement and billing problems within Maine's largest private utility and its devastating impact on Maine's most vulnerable residents.*Enterprise story about the impact of a decade-long wait list for newcomers who want to join the ranks of Maine's lucrative commercial lobstering industry, where those who already have licenses want to keep their profits, and their fishing territory, under the guise of conservation.

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  Yale University

  B.A.