Melissa Brown

Reporter

Nashville, Tennessee

I am an Tennessee-based reporter with experience covering state politics, the death penalty and public health.

Melissa Brown

Reporter

Nashville, Tennessee

I am an Tennessee-based reporter with experience covering state politics, the death penalty and public health.

A police dog killed Joseph Pettaway. His family now fights for body cam footage of his final moments
As the sun rose on July 8, 2018, Yvonne Pettaway-Frazier saw the stain of her brother’s blood on the pavement outside a west Montgomery home. Hours earlier, Joseph Pettaway lay outside the house, bleeding out from a laceration on a major artery in his leg. He’d been attacked by a Montgomery police dog, whose handler was responding to a burglary-in-progress call, and Pettaway would later die from his wounds at a hospital.
Montgomery Advertiser
Civil rights Enterprise Criminal justice
As people sleep in line for benefits, unemployment fund runs low
The Montgomery sky over the Alabama State University campus was rapidly developing from twilight blue to dusky navy when the rain began to fall on the two women. The two pulled tote bags from their sedan before one shrugged into a yellow rain coat, stuffing her pockets with last-minute essentials.
Montgomery Advertiser
Politics Enterprise Health
No guards on post when Alabama prisoner died, fellow inmates say
A man incarcerated at a south Alabama prison collapsed, languished and eventually died inside a cell block as fellow prisoners shouted, banged on walls and splashed water into the hallway in an attempt to get a guard's attention. Two men at Fountain Correctional Facility say Christopher Hurst's death on Sunday came amid dangerously low staffing levels: One prisoner says no guards were on post at the cell block in which Hurst died, and the prison only has a third of the officers for which it is allotted.
Montgomery Advertiser
Criminal justice Enterprise
Avalanche of opioids: Why are millions of pills prescribed in rural Walker County?
DEA data obtained by The Washington Post showed the opioid prescription boom from 2006 to 2012. Montgomery Advertiser. There was a running joke around Walker County when Deidre Wilson was using drugs. Friends and dealers had the same tongue-in-cheek theory: The small, northwest Alabama county had to be a pharmaceutical test market.
Montgomery Advertiser
Enterprise History Criminal justice
Photos and testimony reveal the 'ongoing hell' inside Alabama prison walls
Every time the call comes through, Alice Lister wrestles with the hardest question of her life: Pay the money she can't afford, or risk seeing her son bruised or bloodied, possibly dead. The calls come from inside Alabama prison walls, where her son is incarcerated and where she, by extension, is being extorted.
Montgomery Advertiser
Enterprise Criminal justice Politics
‘I don’t care what they say’: Alabama editor who called for KKK lynching won’t back down
The editor of a small-town Alabama newspaper — who this week called for the extrajudicial killings of "socialist communists" after his history of racist and anti-Semitic editorials came to light — declined to back down, apologize or even acknowledge that his call for violence advocated for the lynching of his fellow Americans.
Montgomery Advertiser
Enterprise Civil rights Politics
'Make the statehouse look like the state': Historic number of women running for office in Alabama
Gray is one of more than 55 women running for state-level offices in Alabama this year, a reaping of seeds planted in the aftermath of the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, the #MeToo movement and, locally, the candidacy of Roy Moore. The slate of legislative candidates is likely the largest in state history — CAWP counts it as the largest since 2000, at least, when its researchers began tracking state candidacies.
Montgomery Advertiser
Enterprise Politics Gender
Solutions Series: Wastewater and public health in the rural South
Though wastewater issues are widespread in the United States, Lowndes County and other rural Alabama communities are considered by many to be ground zero for the issue. Many communities from the Black Belt to Appalachia lack basic sewage and water infrastructure. In economically distressed regions like Lowndes County, it’s led to a surge in poverty-related tropical diseases often found in developing countries.
Montgomery Advertiser
Civil rights Politics Enterprise Health
'The ones nobody misses': Scope of human trafficking in Alabama wider than reported, experts say
The first in a series of stories the Montgomery Advertiser produced in partnership with the Fuller Project for International Reporting.
Montgomery Advertiser
Criminal justice Enterprise Gender Politics
Can Alabama try to kill the same man twice?
A U.S. judge ordered Alabama to preserve death chamber evidence of an aborted execution and be ready to present it at court after lawyers for the condemned man warned his poor health left him with veins unusable for a lethal injection. Four American men have walked out of the execution chamber since the mid-1900s.
Montgomery Advertiser
History Criminal justice Enterprise
Montgomerians recall MLK's death, legacy 50 years after assassination
The news flash blanketed televisions across the country on a spring evening in April 1968. “Good evening,” Walter Cronkite told the nation at the tail-end of his CBS Evening News broadcast. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.”.
Montgomery Advertiser
Enterprise History Civil rights

About

Melissa Brown

Movable Type

social media management

breaking news

records requests

Wordpress

enterprise reporting

peer editing

I lead Tennessee political coverage for the state's largest newspaper, The Tennessean. In the past two years I've reported on stories with global impact, including in-depth breaking news coverage of the Tennessee Three expulsions and the political aftermath of a deadly school shooting. My series unveiling deep issues with Tennessee's execution protocol, in which I identified the Texas pharmacy that provides the state its lethal injection cocktail, won a top investigative reporting prize in 2023.

My death penalty reporting in Tennessee built on years of work in Alabama, where I produced deeply sourced investigations into the state's failing prison system and botched executions. I also reported on state politics while at The Montgomery Advertiser, the state's largest daily newspaper, and led statewide COVID-19 coverage for Gannett's Alabama newspapers.

Before joining the Advertiser, I covered health & tech for the Birmingham Business Journal and state politics for the Associated Press. I've also worked as an editor in daily news and trade magazines, as well as a historical academic project.

I've broken stories picked up by The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, ESPN, MSNBC and BuzzFeed News, among other outlets. I've reported on the impact of gun violence in Alabama's state capital, used data to illustrate enrollment trends in higher education and uncovered voting record discrepancies in local elections, all while handling major breaking news on a day-to-day basis. I believe strongly in using new tools and social media to enable, package and deliver traditional journalism.

I majored in journalism at the University of Alabama, but I learned the craft in a newsroom, not a classroom. I wrote my first news article for The Crimson White student newspaper and went on to spearhead award-winning breaking news coverage.

Résumé and personal recommendations are available upon request.