LPM News has a new health reporter. Morgan Watkins, who starts Feb. 27, comes most recently from the Courier Journal where she covered state government, politics and higher education. She’s lived in Louisville and covered local and statewide news since 2016.
Morgan was born and raised in Florida and previously worked at the Gainesville Sun newspaper covering county and city government and crime.
Learn more about Morgan in the digital conversation below, which has been edited for clarity.
What excites you most about working in public media?
I love how accessible public media is to the diverse community it serves, and how it reflects that commitment in all aspects of its work. I can’t wait to become a part of that.
What new avenues are you looking forward to covering on the health beat?
I’m sure I’ll discover plenty of unexpected things worth covering once I’m on the job. A couple of topics I’m especially interested in reporting on are mental health-related issues and how public policy affects Kentuckians’ access to harm reduction services and substance use treatment.
How do you describe Louisville and Kentucky to folks back in Florida?
I always talk about how beautiful this part of the country is, and how neat the changing seasons are. (Anything other than hot, bright and humid is out of the ordinary for lifelong Floridians.) I also tell them how you see the history here in a different way than I’m used to, since so many more of Louisville’s old buildings have been preserved compared to back home.
What do you do for fun?
I rediscovered one of the best bits of my ‘90s childhood during this pandemic: rollerblading. Turns out it is just as fun now as it was when I was little.
What are you currently watching/reading?
I am living for “The Last of Us” on HBO. I’m a bit obsessed with the video games it’s based on, and so far the adaptation is top-notch. New fans have no idea what’s coming. (Do yourself a favor and avoid spoilers like the show’s cordyceps plague.)
We heard you’re really into Star Wars (respect). What’s one of your most controversial Star Wars opinions?
Spoilers for these decades-old movies ahead: Beloved though he is, Yoda was a disastrous leader for the Jedi Order. He made a horrific decision to let the order command an army of clones who had no legal rights. He missed the clues that his government’s head of state was secretly a Sith Lord until it was too late. And he presided over the order’s problematic treatment of Anakin Skywalker, which contributed to Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side. Yoda was a brilliant philosopher and Jedi who helped save the galaxy by training Luke Skywalker, but his mistakes were partly why the galaxy needed saving in the first place. (I obviously could go on...)
Florida has lots of sunshine and beaches. Why leave?
Well, I never lived super close to the beach (though I’m way farther from it now). Florida will always have a big chunk of my heart. But after a quarter-century of living there, I wanted to check out someplace new. I’m so grateful that place turned out to be Louisville, and Kentucky.