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Jan 06th

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Donna Korando

Features and Commentary Editor

When Donna Korando was a freshman at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, she started work at the Daily Egyptian setting type on a Justowriter and learned to read just enough code to find paragraph breaks and simple words, so she knew where to make fixes. Thirty-nine years later, she has learned enough html to locate problems. What goes around...

In between Carbondale and the Beacon, she taught high school in Manitowoc, WI., and worked at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the copy editor and letters for the editorial page from 1973-77. As an editorial writer from 1977-87, she covered Illinois, the city of St. Louis, education, agriculture, family issues and sub-Saharan Africa. She had the most enjoyment as editor of the Commentary Page from 1987-2003. The page won awards from the Association of Opinion Page Editors in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002. From 2003-2007, she headed the features copy desk.

In addition to a journalism degree from SIUC, Donna earned a masters of studies in law from Yale Law School. Her son stayed in South Beach after graduating from the University of Miami. Her daughter is at Bard College in New York. The house is ruled by two cats.

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The Beacon will expand staff and local news coverage with a $90,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation – one of four grants announced Wed., Dec. 17, to local online non-profit news sites. The grants are intended to help fill the void created when traditional media cut staff.

Beacon's press release (PDF)

Knight Foundation's press release

More Beacon news

BeaconTech is a weekly video podcast looking at Internet and technology news that matters for the St. Louis region. Each week, we'll take a look at news that's important to the region through the lens of the Web.

You can find the home of BeaconTech at www.stlbeacon.org/tech, where new episodes will be posted each Monday, or subscribe using iTunes .

Join the folks who have already found the Beacon on Facebook, the social networking site. See the most popular stories of the day, photos, videos and upcoming events. Visit the St. Louis Beacon page on Facebook and become a fan.

Twitter is a "microblogging" service where users can provide short updates about what they are doing. stlbeacon is our official Twitter feed – check it out to find our featured stories and the news that matters.

Mortgage foreclosures are at the heart of the current economic crisis. The Beacon and KETC/Channel 9 have been covering how mortgage problems affect St. Louis area residents.

Visit our special section to read coverage of these issues, watch Channel 9's stories and access resources to find help. To read about Maureen McKenzie, whose story showcases, so many of the ills, click on part 1 , part 2 and part 3 .

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