Beacon Journal reporters each have their own specialties.
While some bring you important news of the day, others are dedicated to digging deeper into larger stories.
Amanda Garrett and Stephanie Warsmith are two investigative reporters on our enterprise team.
Amanda has been with the Beacon Journal since December 2015 and on the paper’s enterprise team since it began.
She previously worked at The Plain Dealer, where she was also on the enterprise team for about a dozen years.
Throughout her career, she’s won numerous awards for best news and feature writing in Ohio.
Stephanie has been with the Beacon Journal since September 1998 and has covered just about every beat, including police, education, city hall/politics, and courts/criminal justice. She has been an enterprise reporter since February 2024.
She has won national and state journalism awards, including the Al Nakkula police reporting award and best reporter in Ohio by Cleveland Press Club in 2021. One of her most cherished honors was receiving the Rev. Dr. Robert A. Denton Victim Services award in 2024 for her coverage of issues impacting crime victims.
As we kick off 2026, learn more about these journalists who will be heading up reporting on some of this year’s larger projects.
Which of their stories have had the biggest impact?
Amanda and Stephanie have both worked with other Gannett papers on statewide projects that have had a major impact.
Amanda last year wrote about the high levels of radon gas in Summit County homes and how it is a leading cause of lung cancer among people who have never smoked cigarettes.
She loves to tell the story behind news stories, like how a woman lay dying at the Stow-Glen Retirement Village as it abruptly closed around her or what a father heard during a phone call with his daughter when she was shot and killed by a stranger at a Taco Bell drive-thru, along with the family’s ongoing efforts to prevent similar tragedies.
Stephanie helped with a statewide series in 2025 that looked at dog attacks and how state law often failed victims. She told the story of Michael Palmer, a Green man who was mauled by his neighbors’ pitbull that had attacked other neighbors.
After the series, the state legislature passed a law that toughened Ohio’s dog-attack penalties.
What were their most-read stories last year?
Amanda’s most-read story was about a man and his wife who owned the Bath Township AirBnB where eight people were shot, including a teen who died, during a birthday party.
The man who bought the house, a Norton native, once dreamed of having enough money to eat at Ken Stewart’s Grille, where he once worked. After moving to Nevada, he was part of a group that defrauded small businesses out of millions of dollars, court records show.
With that money, the man bought the Bath mansion as a vacation home. While he was in prison, his wife rented out the mansion to strangers through AirBnB.
One of Stephanie’s most-read stories in 2025 was a year-end piece about Mark Dente, a former Copley coach who is accused of bilking investors out of $200 million.
Stephanie has tried with this and other stories on the Dente case to show how the alleged Ponzi scheme has impacted investors. Her year-end story included the plight of a local teacher who invested with Dente and was sued in a clawback lawsuit for the money she made. She ended up selling her home, and she and her family moved in with her parents.
What are their favorite topics to dig into?
Stephanie enjoys writing about unsolved crimes and has teamed up with Paula Schleis, a retired Beacon Journal reporter and co-producer of the Ohio Mysteries podcast, on a series about cold homicide and missing persons’ cases in the Akron area.
Amanda loves writing narratives that unrfurl complex and complicated human stories in an easy-to-follow form, whether that’s explaining a police shooting, a statewide public corruption scandal or how a toxic train derailment unfolded in a tiny Ohio town.
What topics do they want to explore in 2026?
Stephanie and Amanda, along with members of the Beacon Journal’s sports team, plan to explore the issue of sports betting in 2026, including how it has impacted local residents.
Stephanie plans to continue to cover the Dente case and look for cold cases that are worth digging into.
Amanda is starting the new year by looking into disgraced former Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder’s quest for a pardon from President Donald Trump.
What do you want to see the Beacon Journal cover in 2026?
The Beacon Journal is seeking project ideas for 2026.
We want to know what deeper issues in the community we should be looking into this year.
To submit ideas, email vop@thebeaconjournal.com with the subject line “Project ideas,” or submit your ideas on the form below.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Meet the Beacon reporters digging into this year’s biggest stories
Reporting by Theresa Bennett, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
