The Courier-Journal (Louisville)
MEET STEPHANIE KUZYDYM
What’s your role at the Courier Journal?
I am an enterprise and investigations reporter, with a specialty in sports. I like to zig when everyone else zags. It’s finding that one line from a press conference or from a breaking news story, and then digging deep into it. My reporting motto is: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”
A lot of my reporting focuses on the intersection of topics, specifically the health and safety of high school athletes. And I almost always come at it through a sports angle. Why? Tell me the last time you saw a school board meeting on the TV at your favorite restaurant.
Give us a brief history of your journalism career
Put your seatbelts on.
I started in Norman, Oklahoma, as the Oklahoma athletics beat reporter covering football, basketball and softball; then moved to Cleveland, where I covered 180 high school athletic departments; then to Houston, where I covered Rice football before leaving newspapers and switching to broadcast journalism, where I learned how to do daily investigations and to look at local problems through a national lens; then to Cincinnati, where I produced more than 800 stories about two topics: Childhood poverty and the lack of health care on high school sidelines; and finally back to newspapers here in Looah-vul.
Tell us about your day-to-day
It’s never the same. And that’s exactly what I love about it.
One day I’m learning how the ATF inspects federally licensed firearms dealers, the next I’m on the backside of Churchill Downs watching thoroughbreds train (and feeding one or two some peppermints and carrots). Lots of days I’m building databases or requesting open records. Some days are for research or reporting; others are for writing or editing.
What’s your biggest accomplishment or something you are most proud while working at the CJ?
The first leads into the second, so stick with me. First is publishing Safer Sidelines, an in-depth look into the sudden death of high school athletes, along with the first public database of those deaths dating back to the start of the 20th century. It’s my career work. The lack of gold-standard health care on sidelines is a topic that needs to be discussed by more parents and school boards and youth leagues to raise awareness because Damar Hamlin’s collapse on Monday Night Football showed it’s not if it happens, but when. Safer Sidelines continues to drive conversations around athlete health and safety.
The second part is winning the Jon Fleischaker Freedom of Information Award for the more than 1,000 open records requests I sent to report Safer Sidelines. Winning an award named after the man who wrote the Kentucky Open Records Act is a peak journalism nerd moment for me.
What’s cool or fun that you want people to know about you?
I hiked the Grand Canyon rim to rim. I will participate in almost any workout once. I grew up on coffee and conversations. I love live music.
Bonus: What kind of interesting thing can readers expect from you in the next month?
There will always be more stories that focus on that intersection of high school athletes and health and safety. Beyond that, an investigative reporter never reveals their sources ... or their upcoming stories.