The Current is a nonprofit news organization serving Lafayette and South Louisiana. We are part of the Deep South Today network of newsrooms. Learn more about Deep South Today here.
Founded in 2018 by local journalists, The Current‘s in-depth reporting connects Lafayette to stories that matter and helps readers understand how our community works — and how we can make it better. In everything we cover, we put our community first.
Our work is produced as a public service and is available to readers at no charge. Financial support from our readers, grants, major gifts and advertising make that possible. View a list of our major funders.
We publish journalism from contributors who reflect our community’s diversity of people and ideas. We strive for accuracy, fairness, transparency and inclusiveness in our work. Read our policies.
Staff
Christiaan Mader
Editor-in-Chief
Christiaan is the executive director and editor-in-chief of The Current. He co-founded the publication with colleagues Leslie Turk and Geoff Daily in 2018. A veteran journalist, he’s covered politics, government, music and food for local, statewide and national publications, including The New York Times and NPR.
Johanna Divine
Senior Director, Development & Partnerships
Johanna oversees business-side operations for The Current. She has more than two decades of experience producing stories, building systems and growing revenue for nonprofit, public service and tribal organizations across the country. She is an award-winning producer, W.K. Kellogg Policy fellow and is on the board of Basin Arts.
Alena Maschke
Managing Editor
Alena covers health and manages The Current’s newsroom. She came to Lafayette after reporting on the recovery from hurricanes Laura and Delta in southwest Louisiana. A native of Germany, Alena first came to the U.S. as an international student at Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 2016 and has since worked as a reporter in New York, Florida, California and Louisiana.
Zeta McCaskill
Community Reporter
Zeta covers Lafayette’s rich and diverse community, focusing on community connection, transparency, and stories that impact daily life in Acadiana. During her time studying journalism at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, she covered homelessness, housing, art, and Cajun and Zydeco culture. She also worked as a research assistant for the Southwest Louisiana LGBTQ+ Archive, conducting oral histories on African American and LGBTQ+ community members.
Leslie Turk
Lead Investigative Reporter
A founding editor of both The Independent and Acadiana Business and senior editor at The Times of Acadiana in the 1990s, Leslie has worked in the newspaper business in Lafayette for more than three decades, earning state and national honors for her investigative reporting. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Acadiana Advocate, Baton Rouge Business Report and Gambit.
Natalie McLendon
SWLA Investigative Reporter
Natalie McLendon is an investigative reporter covering issues in the Lake Charles region and across Southwest Louisiana. She has a bachelor’s degree in sociology from McNeese State University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Louisiana Illuminator, and other regional outlets.
Contributors
- Geoff Daily
- Ruth Foote
Photography
- Travis Gauthier
- Allison DeHart
- Robin May
Art, Design and Illustration
- Peter DeHart
- Allison DeHart
Advisory Board
Andre Alfred is a leader in hyperscale cloud operations and cybersecurity with Mandiant Managed Defense. A Lafayette native and a graduate of Lafayette High School, Andre holds a Bachelor of Science from WGU Washington, an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a Doctor of Engineering from The George Washington University. He is the first WGU Washington graduate to serve on the university’s advisory board.
Carlee Alm-LaBar is the Executive Director of the William C. Schumacher Family Foundation. She previously served as CEO of the United Way of Acadiana and as planning director for Lafayette Consolidated Government. Known for her efforts in civic engagement, Carlee organized and chaired the Fix the Charter group, a citizen-driven effort that led the successful effort to reorganize Lafayette Consolidated Government’s legislative branch into separate city and parish councils. She is a graduate of Leadership Louisiana and a Next City fellow.
David Begnaud is the lead national correspondent for CBS Mornings, the national morning show of CBS News, and is based in New York City. He has earned some of journalism’s most prestigious awards. A Carencro native, David’s first journalism job was at KLFY-TV10, the CBS affiliate in Lafayette. He started as a teen reporter during his senior year in high school, then worked his way up to a part-time reporter and later weekend anchor. He hosted Passe Partout weekends, and the weekend evening editions of Eyewitness News, attending UL Lafayette during the week.
Deiadra Garrett is a pediatric surgeon with the Lourdes Physicians Group. The Lafayette native holds a medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh, a Ph.D. in genetics from LSU Health Sciences Center, completed her general surgery residency at Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation, and was a surgical critical care fellow at Northwestern University School of Medicine. Deiadra also completed pediatric surgical fellowships at both Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins Medical Institute/University of Maryland (combined program). She serves on the board of the Community Foundation of Acadiana.
Angie Drobnic Holan is director of the International Fact-Checking Network at the Poynter Institute. Prior to that, she was editor-in-chief of PolitiFact, the politics fact-checking website based in Washington, D.C. She was a reporter on the PolitiFact team that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009. Earlier in her career, she was a reporter at the Daily Advertiser and taught journalism at UL Lafayette. She is a graduate of Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts and a native of Patterson. She holds master’s degrees in journalism and library science.