Staff favorites: Emily Previti’s picks for the Capital-Star’s greatest hits of 2025

As the year ends, we’re taking an opportunity to highlight our favorite stories of 2025. 

I started in late May as the Pennsylvania Capital-Star’s first audio reporter, a role focused on expanding on we tell stories through audio, public media station collaborations and more. Right away, I noted the supportive, collaborative team environment. 

I’m grateful for that, how we push one another to be better and having learned so much from watching my colleagues — even after working in journalism for quite some time.  

Here’s some of what stuck out most to me: 

Whitney Downard joined the Cap-Star even more recently, just last month. But she really hit the ground running and got my attention with this story about the Harrisburg-Area Community College faculty strike.

She flexed her storytelling skills and took extra steps to talk to more sources for a fast, insightful read about a news event that could’ve otherwise been handled with dryish, straightforward coverage. 

I found it somewhat challenging to choose the highlights among Peter Hall’s prolific portfolio.

But he’s really good at mining court dockets for the most relevant cases, as with his story about allegations that the Washington County prosecutor’s office has been overzealous in its pursuit of the death penalty.

The top line’s fascinating all on its own. But Pete took the opportunity to provide context about the rules for seeking the death penalty, in addition to detailing the cases in question.

It’s less straightforward, but just as important, to cover what doesn’t happen. Ian Karbal did that with his story about a domestic violence survivor support bill stalled in the state Senate (its companion in the House has since passed and been signed into law).

Also, his article about William Penn School District getting a $5 million bonus in the state budget built off his similar accountability dive last year into additional allocations to certain school districts. 

And as for me, … I most enjoyed collaborating on a multi-media project with our sister outlet Michigan Advance. It dropped in early September. At that point, our states were the only two without a budget of any kind for the current fiscal year (FTR, North Carolina had a partial one in place). So, our editor Tim Lambert shepherded a convening with Advance’s team.

The resulting project hit some key elements for me. Comparative state policy analysis tends to figure into my reporting process. I generally enjoy collaboration. And I had the opportunity to reconnect with some public finance sources after far too long.

Plus, the project included multiple audio elements: a feature that incorporated a tongue-in-cheek montage of our governor’s budget negotiation frustrations as well as an animated longform roundtable conversation among Pete, me and the Advance’s Ben Stoltis. 

Another highlight so far for me was a story that parsed the language in a wrongful conviction compensation bill to show the proposal as written wouldn’t help people as suggested initially.

We’re planning to expand our audio content during the year ahead – in particular, more voices and additional listening options. Stay tuned!