Denver Metropolitan Area
Award-winning journalist with over 35 years experience in metro, state, national and international reporting. Worked for a variety of newspapers and magazines including Newsweek, the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times. Lived and worked in Europe, Central America, East Asia and the Middle East, including two stints in Cairo for about four years. Currently Senior Director of Media Relations at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Specialize in identifying great stories and routinely getting them covered in local, national and international media with the goal of enhancing the reputation of the university and its faculty. Coordinate media communication efforts across complex and wide swath of schools and colleges. Take complex stories and make them understandable and appealing to all media on regular basis. Conduct media training classes, write press release, op-eds for professors, produce podcasts and video and handle crisis management situations. Regular freelancer for Los Angeles Times writing national stories across the West. Most of my freelance stories can be found here:https://muckrack.com/david-kelly-6
Generate local, national and international media attention for research done on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. Write press releases, ghost write editorials, respond to media requests and proactively pitch stories. Counsel and advise leadership on communication strategies, deal with crises and train faculty on how to talk to the media. Serve as editor for all material coming out of CU Anschutz media office. Supervise a small staff. Write and edit for numerous internal and external audiences.
Covered large swath of Southern California including Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Initiated investigations, wrote features, covered immigration and migrant farm worker communities, responded to breaking news and profiled vast array of fascinating folks inhabiting furthest reaches of the California desert. One series on a huge, squalid illegal trailer park in the desert (Duroville) resulted in a federal takeover of the park, the removal of the slum lord who owned it, the building of a new park and it ended the threat of eviction and deportation of over 5,000 impoverished farm workers. Won AP Breaking News award for coverage of a fire that killed five firefighters above Palm Springs. Won Washington Monthly Investigative Journalism Award for six-part series on abuse of women and children by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in AZ and UT.
Covered the entire American Southwest from Denver bureau. On call 24/7 to respond to breaking news throughout the region and the entire U.S. Did investigations into polygamous communities in Utah and Arizona that resulted in federal investigations. Chronicled the life of West with profiles of Peruvian sheepherders in remote Wyoming, ranchers dealing with illegal immigrants slipping across the border in Arizona, would-be migrants as they traveled from Mexico to Tucson, a New Mexico priest who discovered he was Jewish, a man who dedicated his life to creating a giant vacuum to suck up prairie dogs, kidnap gangs grabbing illegal immigrants and holding them for ransom and countless breaking news stories.
Features, breaking news, politics and environmental reporter in Ventura County and beyond. Also, traveled to Yemen to cover the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Aden. Returned to Middle East later after the U.S. invasion of Iraq to chronicle the war with stories from Jordan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
General assignment and projects reporter covering two of the biggest counties in the U.S. Focused on migrant communities, religious minorities, breaking news, features and investigations including the Inland Empire's status as the biggest methamphetamine producer in the nation, the soaring infant mortality rates in San Bernardino, efforts to negotiate gang truces between the Crips and the Bloods, profiles of the poorest communities in California, in-depth coverage of biker gangs like the Hells Angels, high-profile crime coverage including police shootings that attracted nationwide media coverage. And of course, lots of features on desert eccentrics.
Covered Egypt and North Africa for Newsweek based in Cairo. Covered the rise of Islamic extremism in Egypt and its orchestrated attacks on foreign tourists. Traveled to fundamentalist strongholds throughout the region and interviewed radicals in an attempt to understand their way of thinking. Did stories in Libya, including a long, midnight interview with the late Col. Muammar Khadafy in his hometown of Surt. Wrote about human rights abuses in Libya and Egypt. Profiled communities of religious minorities including Coptic Christians, Armenians, Jews, Samaritans etc. Reported on Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and had interviews with former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the late Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat.