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Ellen Weiss

Editor, An Arm and a Leg

About

Ellen Weiss is an award-winning journalist and leader with more than 40 years experience working in audio, video and digital newsrooms. Most recently, as Washington Bureau Chief and Vice President of The E. W. Scripps Company, she created a multimedia national investigative team and launched podcasting for the company. While there, she received her forth Peabody Award for the “Under the Radar” investigative series and the RFK’s Journalism Grand Prize for the investigative documentary “A Broken Trust,” a project highlighting the lack of justice for survivors of sexual assault on tribal lands.

Prior to that she spent nearly 30 years at NPR and served as Senior Vice President of News. In that role, she oversaw global expansion of NPR News, the creation of award-winning programs an investigative unit, podcasts and the digital integration of the newsroom

Weiss is a graduate of Smith College with a B.A. in international relations. She and her family live in Washington, D.C.

Podcasts

Stories

  • Swimming with sharks

    Pharma and insurance companies play devious, clever games, competing for dollars. They’re sharks! And they want to eat us alive.

  • The Insurance Warrior takes on a $61B Company

    When Mattew Lientz needed surgery to save his life, his insurance wouldn’t cover it. Enter: Laurie Todd, the Insurance Warrior. Her first task: Figuring out who Matthew was really fighting, and how big the battle really was.

  • Meet the Insurance Warrior

    In 2005, Laurie Todd needed surgery to save her life. Her insurance company had no intention of paying for it. She went to war. Won. And has been helping other do the same ever since.

  • Wait, that was legal until now?!?

    Hospitals in Maryland were suing patients over bills that should’ve been forgiven. It wasn’t illegal. Until now. How a coalition changed that. This year. Plus, our friends at Dollar For build their bill-crushing army, one Zoom training at a time.

  • A whole book about fighting effed-up medical bills? Yes, please.

    For years, at ProPublica, Marshall Allen has been exposing health care grifters. (He’s our kind of guy.)Now, he's written a book… about how to fight back. It’s called “Never Pay the First Bill.” We talked. It was a whole vibe.

  • Revisiting insulin, as relevant (and expensive) as ever

    Updating a story we first reported in 2019, about how insulin got to be so horribly expensive—the scientists who discovered it did NOT want price or profits to keep it away from people who need it—and what some people are doing about it.