July 7, 2021 — The Connecticut Mirror has hired two veteran reporters. Andrew Brown will join CT Mirror as an Investigative Reporter on July 12. Erica Phillips will be our first-ever Economic Development Reporter starting on August 16. Both reporters come to Connecticut from other parts of the country.
Erica Phillips will report on the state and regional economies, economic development trends, key industry clusters, workforce development, business climate, state business attraction and retention strategies, accountability for business use of state investments, small business formation, and equity.
She grew up in Minneapolis, MN, graduated from Haverford College in Pennsylvania with a degree in economics and a concentration in Latin American studies, and received a master’s in specialized journalism from the University of Southern California. Early in her career Erica was a freelance arts reporter and covered the law firm business and entertainment law for The Daily Journal in California, a statewide legal industry newspaper.
In 2012 Erica joined the Los Angeles bureau of The Wall Street Journal where she was a general assignment / regional economy reporter for three years and then covered freight, trade, and e-commerce for four years. Since 2019 she has been a writer / producer for public radio’s Marketplace, where among other things she led Marketplace’s “Econ Extra Credit” project, conceiving and writing weekly economics lessons for subscribers.
Andy Brown will team up with current CT Mirror Investigative Reporter Dave Altimari and a soon-to-be-announced investigative researcher to expose failed practices, unmet needs, gross misrepresentations, and corruption within government and in government-funded systems.
He grew up in western Pennsylvania, has an undergraduate degree in History and Political Science from Saint Francis University in Pennsylvania, and attended the University of Missouri graduate school of journalism. He spent the past decade reporting for newspapers in North Dakota (Dickinson Press), West Virginia (Charleston Gazette), and South Carolina (Charleston Post and Courier).
Andy has experience covering business, environmental issues, local government and state legislatures. His stories won several investigative and public service journalism awards, most notably for coverage of a $9 billion nuclear power project in South Carolina that was cancelled in 2017. In that investigative series Andy revealed how utility executives strung the failing nuclear project along to cash in on bonuses. Two of those executives have since pleaded guilty to defrauding investors, power customers and state regulators.
CT Mirror Executive Editor Elizabeth Hamilton says she expects Erica and Andy to have immediate impact, noting that “They bring experience and new perspective to our growing news team and will allow us to provide even more value to Connecticut readers as we expand our policy and accountability coverage.”
About CT Mirror
The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit, non-partisan, digital-only news organization that covers public policy, government, and politics in Connecticut. Our journalism focuses on the state budget, economic development, education, health, justice, housing, the environment, legislation, politics, campaigns, and elections. CT Mirror was founded in 2009 and first published in January 2010.