Hello and welcome to the World-Herald’s new blog covering the military and our 2011 trip to Afghanistan. We’d like to introduce the team members you’ll get to know:
From left: Alyssa Schukar, Matthew Hansen, Joseph Morton and Cate Folsom.
Joseph Morton, 35, grew up in Memphis, Tenn., and graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1998. Following a one-year Fulbright fellowship in Frankfurt, Germany, Morton joined The World-Herald in 1999. Morton has chased police scanner traffic, reported on high-profile court cases and grilled city officials on everything from tardy road construction projects to pension spiking. He has received the Thomas C. Sorensen Award for Distinguished Nebraska Journalism. Since 2006, he has worked in the World-Herald’s Washington Bureau, covering the region’s congressional delegations and explaining how the federal government influences the lives of Nebraskans and Iowans.
Alyssa Schukar is a Lincoln native. She graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with a journalism degree in 2006. She joined The World-Herald in 2008, after working as a commercial photographer and working at newspapers in Virginia, Ohio and Florida. The 27-year-old was named Nebraska News Photographer of the Year in 2008 and 2010. She has received awards from the National Press Photographers Association, the Hearst Journalism Award Program, the College Photography of the Year Competition and the Eddie Adams Workshop, among others.
Matthew Hansen, 30, is a Red Cloud, Neb., native. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate joined The World-Herald in 2006. Currently the military reporter, Hansen has written extensively about U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His three-week reporting trip to Afghanistan in 2005 led to a PBS documentary about Hansen’s friendship with his Afghan interpreter. Hansen’s honors include a Great Plains Award from the Tulsa Press Club for an article about a Muslim soldier in the Nebraska National Guard. He has received the Thomas C. Sorensen Award for Distinguished Nebraska Journalism and was part of a World-Herald team honored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors for deadline reporting on the deadly tornado at Little Sioux Scout Ranch.
Cate Folsom, 55, is an Omaha native. She graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a double major in journalism and English literature. She joined The World-Herald in 1979. She has held numerous positions, including features reporter, Washington Bureau reporter, features assistant editor, copy editor, city editor and investigative team editor. As a metro editor she has overseen most of the major local and regional news beats, most recently working with military, legislative and tax watchdog reporters. She has edited numerous award-winning reports and series, including examinations of Nebraska’s irrigation industry, coroner laws and practices, the state’s unique safe haven law and issues surrounding the mass killings at Von Maur.
