Penny Kmitt
Penny Kmitt is a reporter for CBS News Boston who focuses on automobiles and transportation while covering how big stories land in the lives of ordinary people. She works on air and across digital platforms, using community voices to frame everything from major news events to day-to-day city life. Her background in national and local breaking news underpins coverage that is fast, visual, and centered on the people affected.
Community stories around major sports events
A recurring thread in Kmitt’s recent work is the way major sporting events reshape a city’s routines, streets, and public spaces. In her coverage of Scottish supporters in town for World Cup matches, she follows the “Tartan Army” as they prepare to leave Boston, dwelling on their attachment to the city and their public thanks to local hosts. That piece emphasizes how visiting fans navigate the city, gather in bars and public viewing areas, and create a temporary community that blends with local residents. Kmitt’s assignment to be part of her station’s Super Bowl coverage team extends that approach to one of the biggest events on the sports calendar, where she helps translate a national spectacle into on-the-ground scenes of fans, local businesses, and game-day logistics. In this lane, her reporting on automobiles and transportation can sit alongside fan features, with attention to how crowds travel, how traffic patterns change, and how the city absorbs large influxes of people.
Coverage of national tragedies and extreme weather
Kmitt also has experience reporting on some of the most serious stories in the national news cycle. At CBS News Boston she has covered the Richneck Elementary School shooting, following the aftermath of a classroom tragedy over time rather than treating it as a single breaking alert. Her work on Hurricane Ian similarly focuses on the human impact of a large-scale disaster, tracking both the destruction and the long process of recovery for affected communities. Those stories rely less on spectacle and more on careful, repeated visits with people trying to rebuild their lives, and they show her willingness to stay with a story beyond its first headlines. That depth carries over into her current beat when she looks at how severe weather, infrastructure failures, or safety issues affect drivers, commuters, and neighborhoods linked by the road network.
Live reporting and audience perspectives
Live coverage is a core part of Kmitt’s work. She regularly directs viewers to streaming feeds of testimony and other proceedings on the station’s digital channels, and she invites people to share their own experiences and viewpoints for potential inclusion in her stories. That habit of asking for perspectives reflects a reporting style that treats the audience as sources rather than spectators. In practice, it means she builds segments around firsthand accounts from residents, drivers, and business owners who are grappling with whatever story she is covering that day. Her presence on social platforms reinforces this two-way relationship: she uses short video updates to walk through what is happening, when to watch live, and how people can get in touch with her.
Fast-turn local reporting with a national edge
Kmitt’s portfolio spans quick-turn local stories and multi-day national coverage, and that mix shapes how she approaches her automobile and transportation beat. She is used to pivoting from a morning spent in court or at a breaking scene to an evening live shot on an entirely different topic, which keeps her coverage focused and tightly framed. Her scripts are concise and built around clear scenes: a family outside a storm-damaged home, fans in team colors lining up before a match, or drivers adapting to a new traffic pattern. Across subjects, she brings the same discipline to centering the people most directly affected, grounding broader issues in specific streets, intersections, and communities. That combination of fast, responsive reporting and attention to lived experience defines her work at CBS News Boston.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aarian Marshall
Aarian Marshall is a staff writer at WIRED who stands out for covering how cars, software, and policy collide. She writes on transportation systems and cities, from the auto industry to broader mobility systems. Before WIRED, she reported on cities and urban policy for The Atlantic’s CityLab. Her beat runs from electric vehicles, fuel prices, tariffs, and car-buying decisions to autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and software-defined cars. She reports with a systems view, linking policy shifts, technical failures, and urban life to what happens on streets, in repair shops, and at the pump.
Adrian Leung
Adrian Leung writes engineering-led coverage of Chinese electric vehicles and performance cars for CarNewsChina. He focuses on new energy vehicles, battery systems, powertrains, electric platforms, high-end domestic brands, and track-ready models, and he explains technical details in plain language for non-specialist readers. His reporting treats new models as hardware and systems stories, with precise figures on range, battery capacity, chassis layout, motor outputs, weight, and acceleration. He also covers the Chinese auto industry’s finances and technology roadmap, including sector profits, vehicle volumes, and solid-state battery timelines. His background in Electrical and Computer Engineering shows in the way he writes about vehicle electronics and battery management.
Al Pefley
Al Pefley is a television news reporter for CBS12 News whose work centers on how laws, law enforcement and local decisions shape everyday life for drivers and other residents. He reports in a general assignment role but returns often to transportation, public safety and pocketbook issues, treating driving as a point where policy, disability and policing intersect. His coverage includes driver-focused laws, fuel and tax policy, crime, policing and internal affairs findings, with a consistent focus on accountability and concrete consequences for people’s wallets, safety and trust in institutions. He explains county gas tax debates, campaign positions on teacher pay, property crime and retail theft in short, clear segments. Pefley works primarily on the scene, using live or recorded field reporting and interview-driven pieces to show what happened, why it matters and what comes next.
Aliza Savira
Aliza Savira focuses on the hidden financial costs of owning modern cars, especially how insurance can undermine expected savings. She writes about automobiles for MSN, looking at new technology and electric vehicles through everyday ownership rather than showroom appeal. Her work highlights the gap between promises of cheaper running costs and the full financial picture of owning a vehicle. In electric vehicle coverage, she treats insurance premiums as a key ownership problem that can erode long-term value. She stays close to practical questions drivers face, such as which recurring costs matter most after purchase. She reports on how insurance structures and premium levels interact with new automotive technology. Her beat is consumer-focused automobile reporting, with a clear, utilitarian lens on ownership experience, recurring expenses, and risk, rather than lifestyle or performance.