akopsa

On Slow Journalism – Nieman Interview

March 29, 2019 by akopsa

Andy Kopsa is a freelancer crafting her career from longform journalism, specializing in investigations. She has written for The Atlantic, The Nation and even Teen Vogue and was the recipient of a 2013 Knight Grant for Reporting on Religion in American Public Life from USC Annenberg. For The Nation, she tracked down LGBT inmates in Cameroon. Spent time with a mother who was gang-raped in front of her child for a piece in Cosmopolitan. And looked at the shaming of possible rape victim for the Riverfront […]

Categories: Uncategorized

On Grief – NYTimes

March 29, 2019 by akopsa

I got a text message from my father. My first thought: impossible — that old man doesn’t know how to text. My second thought: impossible — my father is dead. My dad died on Sept. 4 — a Tuesday — just a month shy of his 82nd birthday. He was a farmer, just like my grandfather, and was the hardest working man I knew. There are four of us kids; my brother and I just over a year apart, then a five-year gap and two sisters […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Cambodia, free press and elections

October 15, 2018 by akopsa

Click image of PM Hun Sen above for my report from Cambodia this summer @ PRI

Categories: Uncategorized

Emily

August 26, 2017 by akopsa

For families like the Koesters, health care is more than just politicians arguing on cable news. In the year after the kidney transplant, Emily was diagnosed with stage 3 lymphoma, had her lymph nodes removed from her neck as well as her adenoids, and started chemotherapy. During that same period, she was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of dwarfism called Schimke immuno-osseous dysplasia (SIOD), which is also fatal. At the time, Erin says, the family was covered […]

Categories: Uncategorized

Guns

February 8, 2017 by akopsa

My first night in Louisville, Jim showed me his guns. The born-and-bred Kentucky boy stores them in a hulking safe with a keypad lock, hidden inside a walk-in closet. Over 5 feet tall and almost 4 feet wide, it easily holds Jim’s collection of pistols, rifles and handguns, with room to spare. Lining the back of the door is a leather organizer with more guns snugly tucked in its pockets. One by one, Jim pulled out gun after gun, […]

Categories: Investigations

Taylor Hirth “Perfect Victim” Chases Justice

January 6, 2017 by akopsa

Taylor Hirth and I are curled up on a leather couch at the home of her friend in Kansas City, Missouri. It is late afternoon, and the only light in the room is from the television playing a tape of Taylor, now 31, sitting in a police interview room. I watch her as she scrutinizes every word and movement on the screen. Is there something that she didn’t say right? Is she remembering all of this correctly? Could she have done […]

Categories: Investigations

Shaming and Failing

November 22, 2016 by akopsa

How a Bungled Police Investigation Led to a Possible Rape Victim’s Shaming One sexual-assault kit. Clothing — underwear, dress pants, sport jacket, white shirt and shoes. Four vials of blood. One container of urine. Photos of bruises and abrasions on the woman’s body. Dried secretions, soil and debris, suspected semen and saliva. Matted hair cuttings. The Jefferson City Police Department gathered all these things from a young woman named Brittany Burke after she called them to report a possible sexual […]

Categories: Investigations • Tags: sexual assault

The Misleading Message About Gun Control

September 9, 2016 by akopsa

My love of target shooting came late in life thanks to a reporting trip to Kentucky in 2013. I was there to cover the ease with which one can purchase a firearm and buckets of bullets, and to hit up a gun show where I could have bought a rifle literally off some guy’s back, no questions asked. I went to the range with a buddy of mine, and not only did I have a ball, I found I am also a […]

Categories: Opinion

Women & HIV

August 24, 2016 by akopsa

As the 2016 International AIDS Conference was underway in Durban last month, I was reminded of Florence Buluba, a Ugandan woman I met at the 2012 biennial gathering in Washington, D.C. Buluba ran the National Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Not two years later, I found myself in in Buluba’s office, situated atop one of Kampala’s seven hills. Her organization serves HIV-positive women who lack access to basic reproductive health care, antiretroviral therapy, and STI prevention. Buluba spoke passionately […]

Categories: HIV/AIDS

Andy Kopsa

Writer, Journalist

Author Archives: akopsa

On Slow Journalism – Nieman Interview

On Grief – NYTimes

Cambodia, free press and elections

Emily

Guns

Taylor Hirth “Perfect Victim” Chases Justice

Shaming and Failing

The Misleading Message About Gun Control

Women & HIV