Alarming internal probes found chemo errors, delays, and ‘toxic’ leadership by Penn State’s cancer chief
One morning in May 2023, a hospital employee opened her email and read through a woman’s complaint about how her husband’s cancer care was deteriorating. A senior administrator had forwarded the message with a terse note: “Another one.” — Spotlight PA, November 2025
Top Penn State Health surgeon warned leaders about transplant problems months before shutdown. Then he was let go.
By the time he was told to leave the hospital, Raymond Lynch had nearly run out of people to warn. He had warned staff in the transplant unit and fellow surgeons. He had warned his boss. He had even taken his concerns to at least two top Penn State Health leaders. — Spotlight PA, June 2024
As problems roiled Penn State Health’s transplant programs, unknowing patients kept hope. Then they were blindsided.
If she had known, Jessica Clark would have skipped her Friday appointment. But no one had told her yet, so she took another day off work, begged her mother to watch her sons, and set out with her husband, Titus, on the five-hour drive to Hershey. — Spotlight PA, October 2024
Penn State loses fight to keep internal trustee documents hidden as Commonwealth Court sides with Spotlight PA
A Commonwealth Court judge ordered Penn State University to release internal Board of Trustees documents, likely ending a yearslong open records dispute between the university, several state departments, and Spotlight PA. — Spotlight PA, October 2025
Penn State trustees agree to legal training, improved transparency in settlement with Spotlight PA
Penn State University’s Board of Trustees will complete a training on the state’s open meetings law and disclose more information about its closed-door gatherings as part of a settlement with Spotlight PA. — Spotlight PA, June 2025
Coming out to McCallie: LGBTQ alumni share painful experiences in push for historic school to be open and affirming
Will Hunt was going to break the rules. The senior, clad in a sport coat and striped tie, stepped to the microphone. Behind him hung the chapel banner: "Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." The podium in front of him broadcast the seal of McCallie School. — Chattanooga Times Free Press, October 2020
Awards
A-Mark Prize for Investigative Journalism in Pennsylvania
3rd - Investigative Reporting, 2025
Press Club of Western Pennsylvania
1st - Excellence in Journalistic Craft, 2025
1st - Excellence in Written Journalism, 2024
LION Sustainability Awards
1st - Collaboration of the Year, 2024
National Headliner Awards
3rd - Education Writing, 2024
SPJ Keystone Excellence in Journalism
1st - Education Writing, 2023
Green Eyeshade Awards
3rd - Feature Writing, 2022
Tennessee Press Association
1st - Coronavirus Coverage, 2022
3rd - Investigative Reporting, 2022
1st - Feature Writing, 2021
2nd - Investigative Reporting, 2021
Religion News Association
1st - Excellence in Reporting, 2021
East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists
1st - Continuing Coverage, 2020
2nd - Investigative Reporting, 2020
2nd - Pandemic Reporting, 2020
Women in Perry Stone's ministry allege sexual misconduct, say FBI is investigating televangelist
That Tuesday night's “special service” was supposed to be a joyous one for televangelist Perry Stone. He circled the room singing along to the music. He cracked jokes about gaining weight over Thanksgiving. But as Stone was describing to his followers how some people walked away from religion in recent years, the voice of a woman in the back brought the auditorium to silence. “Probably because you keep touching them, you nasty perv,” she yelled. “Why don't you tell them the real reason why they left? Because you kept touching them.” — Chattanooga Times Free Press, December 2021
Leaked audio: They defended televangelist Perry Stone in public. In private, they said he was living a 'predatory lifestyle' and 'false reality.'
In the spring of 2020, two high-level members of Perry Stone’s organization — a ministry leader, along with a Bradley County Sheriff's Office lieutenant who is Stone's head of security — were disgusted by the alleged sexual misconduct of the Cleveland, Tennessee-based televangelist. The two men — in recordings of meetings and conversations obtained by the Chattanooga Times Free Press — expressed concern about their public image being connected to Stone. The law enforcement officer described Stone as exhibiting "a predatory lifestyle." The ministry leader said Stone had a "severe problem, probably a mental illness" and was living in a "false reality" about the situation, according to the recordings. — Chattanooga Times Free Press, April 2022
Legal tug of war over $6 million Christian summer camp pits Bryan College against nonprofit group
The electric golf carts weave among children and chaperones who speckle the mountain’s web of gravel roads. A preteen boy with a wide smile sports a baggy white T-shirt and a jester’s hat. A girl seated in a wheelchair gazes up at the canopy of leaves. Children line up for the water slide, an oasis on an otherwise steamy late July afternoon. The summer camp scene played out just beyond the glass and blinds of John Ballinger’s office. The business analyst, a self-described “lightning rod,” sits at the office’s wooden table, a laminated survey map of the 72-acre Fort Bluff Camp in front of him as he recalls just how he got to this position. “I've done over a thousand risk assessments. This was the most wrong thing I've ever come across in my life,” Ballinger said. — Chattanooga Times Free Press, September 2021