Drew Amman
Drew Amman is an anchor and reporter at LEX 18 whose coverage centers on high-impact community stories across Kentucky, with a particular focus on how public institutions, major developments, and policy decisions affect everyday residents. He brings more than 25 years in local television, much of it in sports anchoring and reporting and play-by-play, into a news portfolio that blends institutional accountability with detailed, human-focused storytelling. His work now occupies the space where community life, government decisions, land use fights, and local crises intersect, while his long sports background continues to inform his pacing and eye for stakes.
FCPS budget shortfall and superintendent controversy
Amman devotes sustained attention to Fayette County Public Schools, following the district’s budget and leadership strains as they unfold. In his reporting on the retirement of a senior financial executive, he sets that departure against the backdrop of a multi-million-dollar budget shortfall and the public scrutiny it has drawn, making clear that personnel changes sit inside a larger story about financial oversight. His coverage of the district’s media briefings during the budget shortfall and superintendent controversy keeps the focus on how decisions at the top ripple through jobs, services, and confidence in school leadership, rather than treating the story as a closed-door administrative matter.
Across this line of reporting, he tracks both the formal actions taken by the district and the unanswered questions they leave, building a picture of a school system under pressure and the governance challenges that come with it.
Mason County data center land dispute
A defining thread in Amman’s recent work is his multi-part coverage of the proposed data center in Mason County and the land disputes around it. He follows landowners who have rejected multimillion-dollar offers, spelling out per-acre figures, the size of the properties, and the scale of the project to show how much money and land are at stake.
In documenting a mother and daughter’s refusal to sell, he connects their decisions to earlier coverage of other families who turned down nearly $8 million for their farm at the same site, framing the project as a prolonged negotiation that tests long-held ties to the land.
His reporting on Meadowland Village residents being given three months to vacate their mobile homes ahead of the proposed data center describes the letters they received, the relocation offers, and the conditions attached to that assistance, highlighting both the financial terms and the uncertainty facing those forced to move. He brings in the developer’s silence, the involvement of lawyers, and the filing of a lawsuit on behalf of residents, presenting the data center as a convergence of corporate ambition, local economic hopes, and the rights of people whose homes lie in the path of development. When he covers listening sessions that give Kentuckians a platform to voice concerns about data centers, he extends the story beyond one project, showing how communities statewide are weighing jobs and tax revenue against land use, transparency, and quality of life.
Community crashes, crime and remembrance
Amman frequently turns to stories of sudden loss and public safety, handling them with close attention to detail and the people involved. His report on the late-night crash on Somerset Road in London that killed three teenagers and critically injured a 20-year-old lays out the ages and hometowns of the victims, the sequence of events, and the law enforcement agencies reconstructing the scene, giving weight to both the human tragedy and the investigative work that follows. In a separate piece remembering Chance Martin, a Holy Cross graduate killed in a hit-and-run, he chronicles how friends recall him and the ways the community tries to ensure he is not forgotten, turning a crime story into a portrait of a life and its impact. His coverage also includes more routine but consequential incidents, such as a Crab Orchard man’s truck being stolen and the police seeking public help, where he focuses on concrete facts and the role of community response in solving cases.
The same attention to individual trajectories appears in his reporting on Franklin County Regional Jail leading the state in GED graduations and recovery, where he connects correctional programs to second chances and measurable outcomes for people in custody.
Community recreation, education and economic pressure
Beyond crises, Amman reports on projects and policies that shape everyday opportunity and infrastructure in Kentucky communities. His story on the Nicholasville Jessamine County Community Recreation Center traces an $18 million project from long-awaited concept to near completion, explaining where the facility sits, how it is funded, and what it promises for residents who have waited decades for such a space.
He covers Clark County’s decision to offer universal pre-K to all four-year-olds and a Frankfort superintendent’s continued endorsement of “Pre-K for All,” linking local initiatives to statewide debates about early childhood education and access. In his In-Depth piece on Kentucky’s minimum wage falling below the poverty line, he places economic policy in concrete terms, spelling out how wage levels compare to poverty thresholds and what that means for workers trying to meet basic needs.
Across these stories, he treats public investments, policy expansions, and economic pressures as lived realities, not abstract numbers, showing how recreation centers, school programs, and wages intersect with families’ options and futures.
Amman’s long tenure as a sports anchor and reporter, including coverage of major events like the Cincinnati Bengals’ Super Bowl run, gives him a practiced sense of narrative momentum that carries into his news reporting. His experience with play-by-play and live coverage translates into clear, tightly structured stories that track developments over time, whether in a school district’s financial crisis, a data center dispute, or a community’s response to tragedy. For stories that touch sports directly or that sit at the edge of sports culture and community identity, he is positioned to connect athletic narratives with the broader civic issues he now covers.
4 more sports journalists.
Adair Reid
Adair Reid is a sports columnist for The Cavalier Daily who covers Virginia men’s programs with a blunt, fan-aware voice that treats them as long-term projects rather than one-off games. He focuses on trajectory, legacy and risk, using opinion columns to question coaching decisions and program strategy while grounding his arguments in recent results, records, tournament performance and roster realities. Men’s lacrosse is a recurring subject, and his work on the program’s coaching change shows how he uses a single decision to examine overall health, standards and competitive standing. He frames games in terms of stakes, identity and institutional expectations, emphasizing postseason implications, recruiting, national perception and alignment with a championship standard. He writes mostly in the first person only when needed, keeps the spotlight on institutional choices and brings analysis-first, evidence-based judgment to Virginia’s flagship men’s teams.
Adam Stern
Adam Stern covers the business of motorsports and combat sports at Sports Business Journal, focusing on how sponsorships, media deals and new events reshape racing and fighting. His beat includes NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, NHRA, rallycross, UFC and boxing. He tracks brands, broadcasters, manufacturers, promoters and streaming platforms, with reporting on sponsorship strategy, rights deals, original content, series growth, team projects and technical regulations. He examines how Cadillac’s Formula 1 entry supports broader marketing aims, how F1 Academy builds commercial momentum and whether new MMA promotions can challenge UFC. His work includes short speed reads on deals and longer features on multi-party investments. He reports on the money and strategy behind the action, treating motorsports and combat sports as connected marketplaces shaped by branding, dealmaking and media innovation.
Albert Burneko
Albert Burneko writes about how systems of power bear down on ordinary people, using sports, politics, technology, food, and domestic life as entry points. He is an assignment editor and writer at Defector and part of its founding ownership group. His politics and capital reporting examines how policy, policing, and public rhetoric turn into harm for specific people, centering victims and vulnerable people. He also covers artificial intelligence, media criticism, and technology’s effects, asking who benefits and who absorbs the costs. His domestic writing focuses on parenting, bodily discomfort, and everyday frustration. His recurring Chefector column turns cooking failures into comic studies of impatience, ego, and routine. He writes sharp reported essays, first-person dispatches, mock explainers, and sports-adjacent guides. His work combines moral seriousness, comic voice, close attention to ordinary life, and a focus on how people live under larger systems.
Albert Samaha
Albert Samaha is a sports investigative reporter who uses games to examine how power, money and culture shape players, workers, fans and communities. He works in The Washington Post sports section, covering global tournaments, migration, fan culture, sports betting, match-fixing, ownership, NIL money, football safety, participation gaps and the changing culture of women’s basketball. His reporting connects events on the field to decisions in boardrooms, betting markets, government offices and law enforcement. He previously reported for BuzzFeed News and wrote for the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly and the Riverfront Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Paris Review. He writes long, deeply reported stories that combine narrative scenes, data analysis, public records, medical records and other documents.