Alina Selyukh

Wire service alumna, pretend Nebraskan, Russian transplant.

I covered health insurance exchanges before they were on Saturday Night Live, penned a story about Wall Street conflicts of interest that included a comparison of analyst ratings to Starbucks cup sizes, co-authored a special report on some scientists suggesting a nuclear explosion as a fix to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and tracked the adoption of new technologies into U.S. political fundraising.

Journalism has taken me down some fascinating paths, for which I feel truly lucky. I have failed at shooting a compound bow at an archery range with a 21-year-old world champion, interviewed prisoners on death row about fundraising for the needy and filmed de-icers preparing a 6 am flight from a frozen tarmac (and miraculously didn't slip). Once, I spent 12 hours watching endless campaign-season ads in an Ohio hotel room for a feature on the dubious effectiveness of excessive political advertising.

My career budded in an oil workers' town in Russia, on a local children's TV program that featured my 8-year-old self asking random people, "What is oil?" Despite pretty riveting scenes of a child interviewing a geologist while sitting in a snow bank in the middle of a Siberian forest, the show lasted a total of one episode.

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