Who is Lascher?

Please click here to view Bill Lascher’s resume.

Bill Lascher is a writer and multimedia storyteller. His work focuses on the environment, energy, transportation, natural disasters and related sciences, but he never shies away from a good story. Though Lascher specializes in narrative pieces with a strong sense of place, he also reports and writes breaking news, analysis and feature stories.

Currently an independent journalist and storyteller, Lascher also has staff experience at multiple newspapers. Additionally, Lascher led development of and coordinated multiple independent community-focused journalism experiments. Most recently he was a co-founder and chair of the Oregon News Incubator, a project developing support structures and cooperative work environments for independent and emerging media producers. He also launched, managed, edited and produced the collaboratively-operated Portland Pigeon, in Portland Maine. Meanwhile, his design, production and upkeep of Lascher at Large both carries on a family tradition of informed analysis and provides a nod to Freedom’s Voice, the self-published, funded and promoted newsletter Lascher produced while in high school.

A recent Knight Digital Media Center fellow at the program’s multimedia and convergence journalism workshop at the University of California Berkeley School of Journalism, Lascher earned a master’s degree in Specialized Journalism from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California. He was a member of that program’s inaugural class. His focus under professor K.C. Cole was science writing, while he also studied environmental science and policy, global civil society and sustainable cities. Meanwhile, under the guidance of Larry Pryor, Lascher’s studies were punctuated by a master’s project consisting of in-depth reporting exploring public transit in Southern California, how the region’s transportation network can be improved, the tension between pragmatism and the need for radical change, and how current political and economic shifts may impact this discussion.

Previously, Lascher edited the Ventura County Reporter, where he also reported, wrote features, analyzed news, local politics, business and culture and even scribed more than a few food and drink columns. He also worked as a technology and legal affairs reporter for the Pacific Coast Business Times, a business journal serving California’s Tri-County region of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura.

A graduate of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine and Oberlin College, Lascher interned at the daily Elyria Chronicle-Telegram and was a news writer and editor, perspectives editor and world and nation editor at the Oberlin Review.