Stacey Shepard

Stacey Shepard is a general assignment reporter for The Bakersfield Californian, a news organization in Kern County at the southern end of California's Central Valley. She is the lead reporter on the COVID-19 crisis in Bakersfield and its surrounding communities, which became a national hotspot in summer 2020. She has also written about the region's notoriously dirty air and groundwater pollution caused by the oil industry. The Buffalo (N.Y.) State University graduate has covered government, politics, courts, economic development, energy, education and the environment in her journalism career. From 2006 to 2009, her primary beat was the environment. She later became the media company's assistant opinion editor and wrote editorials. Before moving to Bakersfield in 2006 she was a reporter for The Tonawanda News in her native upstate New York.