Shay Frank
Food Insecurity & Agriculture ReporterExpertise: Agriculture, housing and homelessness, farming policy, hunger and food access, grocery industry, sustainable food systems
Contact: sfrank@wyso.org
Shay Frank (she/her) was born and raised in Dayton. She joined WYSO as a reporter in 2024, after freelancing for the news department for three years.
Prior to WYSO, Shay covered the arts for The Blade in Toledo.
She graduated from University of Dayton with a Bachelor of Arts in communications and has been honored to be a repeat guest at her alma mater, speaking about her career in journalism.
Her current reporting focuses on food insecurity and agriculture, including solutions to food access in the Miami Valley. This has ranged from grocery access, to composting, to the Farm Bill and more. In 2025, her deep dive into Ohio's gas station boom was recognized with a first place award for enterprise reporting by the Ohio Society of Professional Journalists.
She also works with the music department at WYSO to research and record weekend music breaks for Novaphonic.fm.
Shay is thrilled to be working with the team at WYSO and reporting for her hometown community.
Why trust us
WYSO's independent, nonprofit news team has decades of experience writing and reporting. Our first responsibility is to be a trusted source of news for the Miami Valley and southwest Ohio. There is no connection between our funding and editorial decisions.
Our mission is to produce trustworthy journalism that is fact-based, researched, transparent, intellectually curious, pushes beyond the obvious answers, local, fair, and, when it’s called for, embraces the search for solutions. We believe an educated citizenry is essential to the functioning of our democracy.
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A report on the community impact of the county's direct opioid settlement funding found the money benefited an estimated 6,500 people through opioid prevention, treatment and recovery services. -
WYSO Today brings you news and weather for Dayton and Southwest Ohio. The Ohio EPA approves an air permit for Cleveland-Cliffs’ Middletown Steelworks, multiple organizations are asking residents to help remove invasive honeysuckle in Greene County, reporters react to Ohio's history of "botched" lethal injections for death row inmates, Clark County responds to a rabid bat and GE Aerospace and the GE Aerospace Foundation are investing $1 million dollars in Southwest Ohio. -
Clark County is currently investigating the first human case of West Nile virus and first positive rabies test for a bat in the county since 2021. -
The University of Dayton spent the spring and summer of 2023 analyzing different methods for attracting pollinators to farms. -
The Montgomery County Ag Society met with community members on Sept. 21 to learn more about what attendees would want at their county fair as the organization faces financial uncertainty -
The city of Dayton settled a two-year legal battle with Nourish Our Neighbors over the arrest of a volunteer who was serving a burrito to a homeless man in Courthouse Square. -
Dayton-based 6888 Kitchen Incubator organized the summit to help a business sector that often struggles to find resources and build awareness. -
U.S. District Court Judge Walter Rice will continue to preside over cases in re-entry court and naturalization ceremonies from time to time as he takes a step back from a lengthy career in law. -
A family fled to the United States more than two years ago for safety from Ukraine's war-torn territories. Now, like many other Ukrainian families, they are struggling to remain in the states. -
Kettering Health Dayton established the Unity Garden on Neal Avenue three years ago to help address the area's food desert.
