Jennifer McDaniels

Jennifer McDaniels is a 25-year award-winning print journalist from southeastern, Kentucky. From full-time newspaper work to freelancing, Jennifer has become widely known and acclaimed for her reporting on the issues facing southeastern Kentucky, a remote yet beautiful region of the Commonwealth that has its own unique story to tell – primarily how coalfield counties are determined to both survive and thrive in the wake of coal’s demise and how the resilience and grit of mountain folk are seeing the area through challenging economic times and destructive natural disasters common in the Appalachians like flash flooding.

A multiple Kentucky Press Association award winner, Jennifer has received recognition throughout the state for her journalistic pieces about southeast Kentucky. In recent years, she won a first-place extended news series award for her coverage of the catastrophic eastern Kentucky flood of 2022. Her writing even landed her a surprise first-place sports story award for her chronicles following an underestimated high school basketball team, the Harlan County Black Bears, making a historic run at the state championship. Both colleagues and readers say it’s Jennifer’s storytelling ability and focus on people and their individual plights that make her a compelling journalist. She is a strong advocate for rural journalism, reporting on issues, events, and the people who have particular needs in a particular area and is a champion for facilitating small-town community spirit. Writing about both the challenges and the triumphs of mountain communities in southeastern Kentucky has made her become known as an “Appalachian Journalist.“

Jennifer obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from Carson-Newman College and her Masters in Communications from Morehead State University. She got her start in newspaper reporting at the Harlan Enterprise, but has written for a multitude of publications in southeast, Kentucky. She enjoys photography, Victorian English history and literature, hiking, lively discussions and music around a campfire, and cooking meals for friends and family gathered around large tables with recipes collected from the cherished cookbooks of her late mother, Jeanette, and late grandmother, Roxie. She is immensely proud to be from a long line of strong mountain women.