Ellen Yan has worked at Newsday since 1990, covering distant, local and even odd issues, from abortion bombings to the Nassau search for a lost dog by Wonderbread and soda delivery drivers.
Half her Newsday stint has been spent writing Long Island issues, including environment, towns and law enforcement. Her editors sent her to Israel to cover the 1996 prime minister election, just in case there was a lot of terrorism, and she was practically a Florida resident in 2000 but avoided paying taxes there while covering Cuban boy refugee Elian and the controversial presidential election. Her story on the Suffolk medical examiner’s job after the TWA Flight 800 crash was part of Newsday’s 1996 Pulitzer Prize package for spot news reporting.
Recently, she’s moved from one tumultuous beat to the next – anthrax, impeachment, fatal shootings on Capitol Hill; historic revamp of New York City schools; Medicare’s new drug program for seniors; and mortgages and real estate since summer 2007.
Past jobs include Los Angeles Times, NASA, ABC in Washington, D.C., and child labor under parental law. She graduated with a B.S. from the University of Maryland.
If she didn’t have to work, she’d be traveling around the world, reading manga, watching anime, volunteering for animal causes and dreaming about jetting across the universe in her spaceship.
She can be reached at ellen.yan@newsday.com.