Hi, I’m Jillian. I work as a criminal justice reporter for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans. I’m also a freelance journalist and editor whose work has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, Scientific American, Travel & Leisure, EatingWell, Food & Wine, and many other outlets.
As a freelance journalist, I’ve written about a female astronaut who paved the way for other women in NASA; a llama whose antibodies could be the key to treating the novel coronavirus; how our drinking habits have shifted in quarantine; an island where real-life dragons live; the perils of a monkey sanctuary; and the merits of having a mini-fridge.
Previously, I worked as an associate editor at Cleveland Magazine, where I wrote long-form (and award-winning) features and front-of-book news items. I profiled a local chef attempting to rehabilitate felons through culinary arts; I covered a heart transplant from beside the operating table; and I took an in-depth look at how LGBTQ-friendly the city was in 2014. I spearheaded and wrote the award-winning project “194: Heroin’s Toll,” which profiled every person who died of a heroin overdose in 2014 in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.
And before that, I worked as a crime reporter for the Press Register in Mobile, Ala., and as a county reporter for the Hattiesburg American in Hattiesburg, Miss. I profiled Mobile’s most-jailed man, and the lives of four children fatally tossed from a bridge by their father; detailed a community derailed by methamphetamine; and traced the origins of a single stolen gun. I also wrote about a young boy suffering from Niemann-Pick Disease Type C, a rare and fatal disorder, and the unethical practices of a FEMA contractor — work that resulted in the loss of that company’s government contract.
