PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - Jennifer McDermott, a reporter with extensive experience breaking news on the military beat in southeastern Connecticut, is joining The Associated Press as a reporter based in Providence.
McDermott, 33, has covered the submarine base in Groton and the military in general for The Day of New London, Conn., since 2006. She also developed a secondary beat covering education.
The announcement was made Tuesday by AP East Region Editor Karen Testa and New England News Editor Cara Rubinsky.
“Jennifer is a top-notch journalist whose considerable source-development and enterprise skills will help further distinguish the AP’s report in Rhode Island,” Testa said. “As a resident of the state, she comes with in-depth knowledge of the area, its people and its news.”
On the military beat, McDermott has broken stories including a submarine commander losing his command because he had an affair and faked his own death and Google building a mysterious barge in New London. She conducted months of investigation to reveal turmoil in the security force at the submarine base and the fact that state and federal laws were not being enforced, and separately, that the head of a local submarine veterans’ organization resigned because he was accused of mismanaging clubhouse finances and risking an Internal Revenue Service seizure of submarine veterans’ assets nationwide.
She also went to Iraq in 2008 to report on sailors taken off ships to guard prison camps and spent four days aboard the USS Missouri in 2012 for a series on life aboard submarines.
McDermott is a 2003 graduate of the University of Connecticut and has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She lives in Warwick, R.I.
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