Chips Quinn Reporter Spotlight: Olivia Evans
Posting: Tuesday, October 20, 2026
Olivia Evans, a business and autos reporter at The Courier Journal, part of USA Today Co., has built her early journalism career around a simple idea: everyone cares about their pocketbook, which makes business news one of the best ways to get people to care about the world around them. That idea, paired with a curiosity she's had since childhood, now shapes her coverage of Kentucky's bourbon industry, the Kentucky Derby and some of the region's biggest companies.
Evans had her first reporting assignment in third grade. On a field trip to JA BizTown, where kids run an imaginary city and shadow adults in real careers for a day, she was assigned the job of news reporter and was paired with a journalist from a local TV station. The journalist told her to go question the kid playing mayor and walked her through a simplified version of ‘Freedom of the Press’, and she thought it was one of the coolest things ever.
Olivia Evans
Chips Quinn Reporter
Her family moved to Louisville from Shreveport, LA, when she was four, and she came to know Derby City as her hometown. Evans said the signs she'd become a journalist showed up early. "As a kid, I was often called 'nosy,' but I was just curious," she said. After the BizTown trip, she grew far more invested in the evening newscasts and episodes of "60 Minutes" her parents watched at home. Her grandmother and father both dreamed of becoming published writers, and her father attempted to study journalism before he had to leave college without a degree. "Sometimes, I feel like I'm living out the dream of generations for my family," she said. Evans won her first writing award in first grade and credits the educators and parents who encouraged her to believe writing could become a career. "I don't think I truly decided on journalism until high school, but looking back I'm certain journalism decided on me much earlier in life," she said.
Photo credit Scott Utterback | Evans interviewing then-Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigeig at UPS Worldport
That decision came at duPont Manual High School, where she was accepted into the magnet school's Journalism and Communications program and eventually became editor-in-chief of the student-run news site manualredeye.com. She went on to the University of Missouri School of Journalism, graduating in 2022 with a bachelor's degree in print and digital journalism along with three minors and certificates in multicultural studies and honors. At Mizzou, she covered social justice issues for the Missourian; arts, culture and lifestyle for Vox Magazine; and business for Missouri Business Alert, where she also tried her hand at podcasting. She spent a summer on the Forbes consumer team, writing an online cover story about the cost of being an Olympian for Team USA during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, and later took part in the Politico Journalism Institute. In 2024, she completed the National Press Foundation's yearlong Widening the Pipeline Fellowship, which connected her with mentors and gave her skills she still draws on daily.
Her beat at The Courier Journal spans the bourbon industry and all things Kentucky Derby, including Churchill Downs, along with companies like Ford Motor Co., GE Appliances, Yum Brands, Papa John's, Texas Roadhouse, Humana and UPS. "In my mind, business journalism is the best way to engage the public and get people to care about the world around them," she said. "Everyone is impacted by money, jobs, the economy, and everyone cares about their pocketbook and what it means for them." She's most drawn to stories that bring readers behind the scenes, humanize a topic or hold the big guys accountable. Recent work she's proud of includes a look at how Texas Roadhouse's grocery store products grew to $60 million in sales, a tour of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and an examination of Churchill Downs' bet that the Derby can get even bigger.
She is a former Mizzou track and field athlete who threw the hammer and weight, and she brings that team mentality to the newsroom. "I aggressively value teamwork and treat journalism as a team sport," she said. While she has plenty of solo bylines, she said the stories she's most proud of were collaborations with coworkers, and she hopes the industry keeps moving toward valuing collaboration over competition.
Why Join the Chips Quinn Fellowship?
Evans said she's constantly looking for ways to grow, especially as shrinking resources and funding at publications leave reporters to chart their own career development. She hopes to make a long career out of journalism, and the program came highly rated by peers and promised the kind of mentorship she believes can carry her through her early career.
From the fellowship, she hopes to gain a community that will push her as a reporter and future leader, along with early skills that put her on a path to leadership, lessons on how to sustain a long career and more tangible reporting and writing skills.
Advice for Aspiring Journalists
"Be willing to be gritty. This industry isn't for the weak," Evans said. She pointed to the long days and longer nights, difficult sources, corporate rhetoric and tough edits, but said reporters who go all in can make a real difference in people's lives. Her second piece of advice is to make the industry respect you. "So far, I've learned maintaining boundaries to protect my mental wellness, being reliable at the work I do during my scheduled hours and consistently delivering the content I've promised has gotten me further than forging ahead into burnout could," she said.
Message from her mentor:
“Partnering with Olivia this year has been an absolute honor. We have taken on challenges from video reporting to public records requests, and it's been so fun to see her massive growth in both areas.
Olivia represents everything Chips Quinn has always been about identifying and developing in early career and student journalists: sharp, eager, curious and bold. She is a multiplier force for good in her newsroom— an example of this is a video gathering tip sheet that she developed for her colleagues. She not only got to share it staff-wide, Olivia also received praise from a few newsroom leaders.
I know I will be cheering Olivia on for a long time and look forward to continuing to support her as she succeeds."
Emma Carew Grovum
Started by Freedom Forum, the original Chips Quinn program helped put college interns into newsrooms across the country. Since its beginnings in 1991, the program has reached more than 1,400 people, many of whom are now in leadership positions for local and national newsrooms. Today, the program aims to offer support to early-career journalists already in their respective newsrooms through a 1:1 mentorship by leading members in the journalism field as well as alumni from the program. Thanks to continued support for the program from Freedom Forum, each Chips Quinn Reporter receives a $10,000 stipend..
About Freedom Forum: Established on July 4, 1991, by USA TODAY founder Al Neuharth, the Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) foundation dedicated to fostering First Amendment freedoms for all. As the nation’s foremost advocate for First Amendment freedoms, the Freedom Forum engages thousands of Americans each year in classes, conversations and celebrations of these essential rights, including through the Power Shift Project, the annual Al Neuharth Free Spirit and Journalism Conference, the Chips Quinn Scholars Program for Diversity in Journalism, the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media, the Free Expression Awards, the annual “Where America Stands” survey, the Journalists Memorial and Today’s Front Pages.
About JFP: The mission of Journalism Funding Partners is to strengthen the depth, diversity and sustainability of local news by building and shepherding relationships between funders and local news organizations. JFP is a recognized nonprofit that acts as fiscal sponsor, allowing foundations and individual funders to contribute directly to local news, regardless of the news organization’s business model. JFP manages the funds feeding numerous news initiatives, including more than a dozen Climate reporters in the Southeast, an Equity Desk at The Sacramento Bee, an Education and Economic Mobility Desk in California’s Central Valley, the Investigative Fund of The Miami Herald and for Inclusivity and Investigative funds at the Associated Press.
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Media Contact: Rusty Coats, Executive Director | rusty@jfp-local.org | (813) 277-8959
