Nika Schoonover
Journalist
Recent work
Below you will find some of my recent work from BK Reader, Courthouse News Service and Capitol News Illinois. You can view more of my stories, organized by publication, in their respective tabs.
BK Reader: A decade in, a Bushwick community garden blossoms
In a community garden tucked between the elevated M train and Bushwick II housing projects, Jeanne Salchli considers whether to replant recently dug-up daffodil buds.
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“They go through a restratification process, and if we disturb them right now,” Salchli said. “I don’t think that’s going to work.”
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Salchli, a science teacher at P.S. 376, manages the Himrod Wilson Community Garden in Bushwick, a once-overgrown lot that she has transformed into a thriving green space over the past decade.
Courthouse News: Ozy Media founder Carlos Watson ordered to pay $96 million for fraud scheme
Ozy Media founder and chief executive Carlos Watson will pay over $96 million in restitution and forfeiture, in addition to his prison sentence, for his involvement in a fraud scheme in which he conspired to impersonate a YouTube executive and repeatedly lied to investors about the now-defunct media company’s finances.
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Watson was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison after a Brooklyn jury convicted him in July 2024 for conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud, in addition to aggravated identity theft.
Capitol News Illinois: Legislative watchdog Michael McCuskey sees job as educational opportunity
After 15 months as Illinois’ Legislative Inspector General, Judge Michael McCuskey is moving to Springfield.
Since he first assumed the role in February 2022 – several months after the high-profile resignation of his predecessor – McCuskey has commuted to his Capitol Complex office from his Peoria home. Now, after he was nearly unanimously approved to a full five-year term in the final weeks of the General Assembly’s spring session, he’s hoping to move at the end of the month.
