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Emyle Watkins ’20 is a news intern at WGRZ Channel 2 this semester. There, she works side-by-side with Steve Brown ’83, WGRZ’s award-winning investigative reporter.

On Thursday, October 31, WGRZ broadcast Brown’s story “Dead and Gone.” The story tells the tale of a Cheektowaga family on the hunt for the remains of a deceased relative, whose body was one of more than 900 that were exhumed and reburied in the 1950s as part of a land deal between a cemetery and railroad.

Through dogged reporting, Brown’s story helped uncover a possible final resting place for John Slomczewski, and also revealed the mystery of what happened to many of the other bodies.

Brown didn’t work alone. The Murrow Award-winning reporter, who teaches investigative reporting at Canisius, credited Watkins’s weeks of research, writing and journalistic legwork as invaluable to getting the story accomplished.

“Emyle is always thinking, always working, always doing the extra things that make stories richer and stronger. Her fingerprints are all over ‘Dead and Gone,” Brown said.

He praised Watkins as hard-working and focused. Ultimately, Brown said, “Emyle Watkins is in a class by herself. I believe she is destined to be a difference-maker as a journalist.”

Watkins is the managing editor of The Griffin. She majors in journalism and digital media arts.

Submitted by: Daniel Higgins, assistant professor of journalism, Communication Studies