Stephanie Murray

By Haley LaKind '23

Stephanie Murray '18 is a proud University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate. As a journalism major, she explored many news writing and reporting opportunities and networked with professors and classmates. Murray also took advantage of meetings with advisors, the UMass Alum Online News Association, internships, classes, and extracurricular activities.

While at UMass, Murray wrote for Amherst Wire and was named Editor-in-Chief her junior year. As the person responsible for handling all the editors and writers, she felt her leadership skills flourished. “We won our first award when I was Editor-in-Chief, and we went to a conference; I think it was the College Media Conference, which was very cool,” Murray said.

After her freshman year of college, she had the opportunity to write current news stories while interning at Lowell Sun, a news outlet located in Lowell, MA. She then interned with the Daily Hampshire Gazette during sophomore year and was hired the following summer as a staffer.

“I was always volunteering to do stuff outside of my hours, so they would pay me a freelance rate to write stuff for the newspaper,” Murray said.

Her all-time favorite class at UMass was Newswriting and Reporting with Jim Foudy because she was able to gain hands-on experience interviewing and reporting on relevant stories. Foudy was the one who inspired her to work at the Daily Hampshire Gazette after she took his class. She also enjoyed Ethics and Law and continues applying skills she learned in that class to her job today.

Working at the Daily Hampshire Gazette was her first opportunity to work full-time in a newsroom, and she carried a lot of responsibility. During her time there, Murray covered town and school committee meetings. She later interned at the Statehouse News Service before landing her role as author of POLITICO Massachusetts Playbook and co-host of The Horse Race podcast. Now she is the author of POLITICO Morning Score, a campaign newsletter.

Murray spends much of her day on the phone with sources, then writes during the afternoon and evening for the following day.

Her favorite topics to report on include campaigns and elections. She enjoyed covering the Senate race between Joe Kennedy and Ed Markey. “There was something new going on every day, it was so competitive, and it was the biggest story here that everyone wanted to talk about,” Murray said. She lives for the high-pressure atmosphere of the events, and although Murray loves what she does, her dream would be to cover presidential elections someday.

This profile was written as a part of the 2021 Alumni Spotlight Series by students in the Writing for Public Relations course.

Murray is now a national politics reporter at The Arizona Republic.