New Hires, Staffing Changes at NCR

By Dennis Coday
National Catholic Reporter
June 27, 2014

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/new-hires-staffing-changes-ncr

Effective July 1, Joshua J. McElwee is NCR's Vatican correspondent. You've been reading McElwee's reporting and feature writing in NCR's print issues and online for about five years now. He has developed a well-earned reputation for careful and serious investigations on topics as diverse as the continuing development of the nation's nuclear weapons complex to transparency at the U.S. bishops' conference in their investigations of theologians.

His work has received numerous awards from the Catholic Press Association and one for news writing last year from the Religion Newswriters Association. Over the last year, he has been splitting his time between Washington and Rome, as preparation for his moving to Rome full time. I am happy to announce that move will take place in August.

Also on July 1, Vinnie Rotondaro will join NCR as national correspondent. Rotondaro is a master storyteller and he wants to use those skills to write about how public policy affects the lives of ordinary folks and the Catholic church's role in shaping public policy. He'll also keep his eye on national trends in the American Catholic church, whether that's stories about ministry to migrants or Mass translations.

Over the course of his journalistic career, Rotondaro has worked as a copy aide at the New York Post, a crime reporter at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and a general news reporter at the New York Daily News. He has written for a variety of publications, including Salon, Slate and Vice. Over the past year, he has served as editor at large at Narrative.ly, an online long-form storytelling outfit, where he recently won a New York Press Club award for a story about urban gentrification.

And finally, Nicholas Sciarappa began work as our newest Bertelsen intern June 2, just a few weeks after graduating from John Carroll University in Cleveland, where he majored in communications and Catholic studies. A native of Pittsburgh, Sciarappa worked for the student-run The Carroll News as staff writer, diversions editor and a cartoonist. We thought that made him a perfect fit for NCR.

Sciarappa wrote today's story about the Massachusetts bishops and the statute of limitations, but his first piece for NCR, a profile of the Chicago-based troupe-ministry Still Point Theatre Collective, appeared in the June 6-19 issue.