About
Ethan Coston (he/they) is an award-winning journalist and hobby photographer based in San Diego. He's currently an associate editor for The American Independent, a progressive nonprofit digital news outlet, where he works with reporters covering local news across four states. Over the span of his career, he's covered state and local politics in Pennsylvania and California, higher education, and hyperlocal news. They graduated from the University of California, San Diego in 2020 with a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Sociology.
Ethan was previously a government reporter for Spotlight PA, where he covered elections, extremism, and threats to democracy. He covered extremist politicians and threats to democracy, wrote about efforts to ban transgender children from competing in girls' sports, and was one of the first to cover Pennsylvania's version of "Don't Say Gay."
One of his freelance stories for the North Coast Current in Encinitas, California, received a first place political story award in 2021 from the San Diego SPJ. The same story, about political division ahead of the 2020 general election, received an honorable mention from the San Diego Press Club.
Over the span of three years, Ethan conducted an extensive investigation into sexual misconduct at UC San Diego, publishing stories with both The Triton, UC San Diego's independent student-run digital news outlet, and Voice of San Diego. He sued the University of California twice for illegally withholding investigation documents, which it provided after settling. One of his subsequent stories won a San Diego SPJ award for college in-depth reporting in 2020.
Ethan served as a news reporter, assistant news editor, and managing editor of The Triton, where he covered state, local, and campus news. He was an inagural College Journalism Network fellow at CalMatters in 2020.