Steph Quinn
Steph Quinn reports on how Missouri’s social safety net functions in practice, following the money, rules and paperwork that determine who keeps or loses basic services. She covers social services for Missouri Independent with a focus on the financial and administrative systems behind Medicaid, food assistance and disability support. Her reporting combines policy detail, budget scrutiny and case-level examples to show how gaps in government processes translate into lost coverage and strained families.
Social safety net and bureaucratic failure
Quinn’s core work traces how Medicaid eligibility rules interact with overloaded administrative systems, creating large-scale losses of coverage for people who remain eligible.
In her coverage of the state’s recent redetermination cycle, she quantifies the hundreds of thousands of Missourians who lost Medicaid and highlights that the vast majority were terminated for procedural reasons rather than true ineligibility. She explains mechanics like ex parte verification, renewal letters and the state’s computer system, showing how missed forms, processing delays and auto-closures drive wrongful terminations.
Her reporting links those failures to looming federal work requirements and error-rate penalties, framing Medicaid not just as a health program but as a high-stakes financial and administrative system. Throughout, she grounds policy analysis in advocates’ experiences and agency responses, making clear how small paperwork breakdowns cascade into serious financial and health consequences.
Food assistance and basic needs programs
Quinn extends the same focus on process and money to food assistance, documenting how new paperwork demands in SNAP are tied to federal pressure on payment error rates. In recent coverage, she outlines additional forms and verification steps the state is imposing to curb overpayments, and reports advocates’ concern that eligible residents will lose food aid because of the added administrative burden. She treats SNAP as part of the broader fiscal picture, connecting error penalties, compliance efforts and household-level hunger risks.
The work stays close to the fine print of policy changes while stressing who is most exposed when the system prioritises correction of errors over continuous access to benefits.
Disability and mental health services
Quinn regularly reports on disability and mental health supports as budget items that can be trimmed and as community infrastructures that are hard to rebuild once cut.
Her coverage of possible reductions to NAMI Missouri services details how family support groups and education courses have long filled gaps in the mental health system, then tracks how pending budget decisions put those programs at risk. In her reporting on Missouri’s withdrawal from a multistate lawsuit over federal disability rights protections, she explains why the state’s exit offers advocates relief while a narrower federal interpretation could still give other states more room to curtail community-based services. She connects legal and budget developments to the day-to-day ability of people with disabilities to live in their communities rather than institutions, keeping the financial stakes and human stakes in the same frame.
Public finance and economic development deals
Quinn brings a public finance lens to economic development projects, examining how tax incentives and revenue-sharing arrangements affect local governments and services. In her reporting on a major data center plan in rural Missouri, she details proposed personal property tax abatements, annual payments in lieu of taxes and the distribution of funds among towns and school districts.
The story raises transparency questions and shows how large corporate deals reshape county budgets, school funding and the capacity of small communities to plan for long-term needs.
By treating tax abatements and side agreements as central subjects rather than background detail, she situates business expansion inside the fiscal tradeoffs facing local officials and residents. Her previous investigative work on criminal justice systems and social programs informs this approach, carrying an accountability mindset into coverage of how public money is allocated and overseen.
4 more finance journalists.
Abigail Summerville
Abigail Summerville brings a leveraged finance background to her work covering consumer and retail mergers and acquisitions for Reuters. She reports on deal-making and capital markets across food, beverages, spirits, personal care, skincare, bath products and pet food. Her stories focus on transaction terms, ownership stakes, valuation, debt structures and funding sources. She often breaks news on potential sales and strategic reviews before formal announcements. Notable coverage includes Sazerac’s acquisition of Au Vodka, Blackstone’s exploration of a ZO Skin Health sale, CVC’s efforts to sell the parent of Dr Teal’s, and Colgate-Palmolive’s planned divestitures. She also covers consumer IPOs, including Jersey Mike’s and Black Rock Coffee, and co-writes Wall Street market reports. She joined Reuters in 2022 after three years covering leveraged finance and primary debt markets.
Adekunle Agbetiloye
Adekunle Agbetiloye is a senior reporter who connects capital flows, hard numbers and energy transition to the wider African economy. He works at Business Insider Africa, covering how money, technology and energy reshape economic growth, jobs and living conditions. His beat spans the African economy, technology, energy transition, climate change, startups and critical minerals, with a focus on concrete deals and data-led stories. He reports on African startup funding cycles, sovereign wealth funds, billionaire investors, multilateral and private investment programs, energy and power markets, Bitcoin mining, and economic policy choices. His work follows how governments finance spending, manage debt and respond to social pressure, and how sector snapshots and health and development metrics reveal links between macro indicators, corporate strategy and everyday costs.
Aimee Picchi
Aimee Picchi connects Social Security, retirement programs and economic policy directly to the financial security of ordinary Americans, showing how macro decisions hit household budgets. She is associate managing editor for CBS MoneyWatch at CBS News, covering business and personal finance with clear, accessible explanations of complex money issues. Her core beat is Social Security and retirement, interest rates and inflation, and how policy, markets and company strategies affect workers, retirees, savers and investors. She reports on benefit adequacy, looming Social Security cuts, COLA changes, Federal Reserve rate decisions, fuel costs, trade tensions and labor’s share of income, always framing coverage around pocketbook impacts. Her background includes retirement reporting fellowships, prior staff reporting on technology, media and business, an Institutional Investor book on affluent investors, and freelance work for national outlets. She also writes science fiction and fantasy and is a Nebula Award finalist.
Alex Harring
Alex Harring turns fast-moving market, economic and corporate developments into clear pre-market briefings that show what will matter when U.S. trading opens. He is a markets and economics reporter for CNBC’s digital platforms and writes Morning Squawk, a flagship daily newsletter that gives readers five key things to know before the stock market opens. His beat spans financial markets, investing, consumer trends and the U.S. economy, with coverage of central bank decisions, inflation, corporate strategy, sector moves and geopolitical shocks. He focuses on how policy, data and earnings shape equities, interest rates, currencies and investor positioning, linking price action with underlying drivers in real time and in reported features. Harring’s background reporting on corporate news, business and the economy across print, digital, broadcast and streaming informs his habit of connecting markets, companies and geopolitics in one frame.