Patrice Taddonio
Senior Digital Writer
As a senior digital writer at FRONTLINE, Patrice writes news stories for the series' website that add context to breaking developments by drawing on FRONTLINE's documentaries in timely, compelling ways. She also interprets key moments from upcoming documentaries as digital stories, breaking them out in advance of broadcast. A member of the team that won FRONTLINE’s 2021 Webby Award in the Websites & Mobile Sites: News & Politics category, she's obsessed with developing FRONTLINE's rich digital archive of in-depth journalism as a living resource.
Patrice has written about everything from crackdowns on dissent in Russia, Hong Kong and Iran, to civilian deaths in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, to the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long campaign to defeat climate action, to how the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority came to be. Her stories have been cited in a Congressional report, amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, in multiple books, and by organizations including the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. Naval Institute and the Center on Immigration and Child Welfare. In 2015, a piece she wrote on the CIA’s destruction of interrogation tapes became what’s believed to be the first FRONTLINE story to reach #1 on Reddit’s homepage.
Through her writing, Patrice helps powerful investigative storytelling get seen, heard and read. She serves as FRONTLINE's lead newsletter editor and writer and helps to edit and oversee FRONTLINE's social media content.
Patrice is a graduate of Tufts University, where she served as editor-in-chief of Tufts' independent, student-run newspaper, The Tufts Daily; interned with the Associated Press; and wrote magazine-style features as a member of the school's then-fledgling web team. She graduated summa cum laude and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Her senior project, an exploration of the Judith Miller saga and the uses and perils of anonymous sourcing in journalism, won 2006’s Best Project in Print Journalism Award from Tufts’ Communications & Media Studies Department. She also attended Columbia Journalism School's Publishing Course.
Before joining FRONTLINE in 2013, Patrice spent four years as the first-ever communications staffer at The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship, a leadership development and community service nonprofit focused on eliminating health disparities. She served as the organization's website editor, launched and wrote its blog, ran its social media platforms, and developed trainings for its fellows on how to communicate effectively about complex topics. Patrice also spent several years working in book publishing at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, where she specialized in promoting narrative nonfiction.