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Emyle is pictured smiling at the camera. They are a white person with long brown hair and brown eyes. They are wearing a black blouse and standing outside.

Emyle Watkins

Multimedia Reporter

Emyle Watkins is a multimedia investigative journalist with experience in newspapers, web, TV and radio.

Emyle joined WBFO in March 2021 to cover the disability community - a topic area she believes deserves better coverage and investigative reporting focused on disability rights, community, culture, and access issues that impact people with disabilities. As someone who identifies as disabled and neurodivergent, herself, she wants to make sure the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities are accurately represented.

Buffalo-born and raised a short drive from the city, Emyle (pronounced like Emily, despite the spelling) got her bachelors degrees in Multimedia Journalism and Digital Media Arts at Canisius College.

Emyle’s journalism career began at the early age of 16, when she became the primary sports reporter/photographer for her hometown newspaper, The Springville Journal. Since then, she has also freelanced or had work published in other newspapers including The Buffalo News, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The Public.

While Emyle started as a sports journalist, early on in college she realized she wanted to pursue investigative journalism as a way to make a difference for communities and hold those in power accountable.

In college, Emyle quickly moved into an editorial position at The Canisius Griffin, and served as the managing editor there, leading the investigative team, often looking into finances and covering student government/college administration. She also redesigned the newspaper’s website and print product to be more accessible to readers with visual disabilities.

As part of Canisius’ Video Institute, Emyle co-produced and was the reporter for the documentary “NewBorn: Maternal Resources in New York State,” which won a Telly Award in 2020. While on a fellowship at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, she won a Pennsylvania Golden Quill by co-writing “There are Black people in the future,” a series of artist profiles.

Emyle interned at WBFO in 2020 and later became an associate producer on the digital and investigative teams at WGRZ -TV (Channel 2). There she helped develop stories on such topics as unsolved shootings in Buffalo, and how over 900 graves were lost in a Cheektowaga cemetery.

Follow @EmyleWatkins.
Email Emyle at ewatkins@WBFO.org
Desk (call only): 716-845-7000, ext 233

  • Todd Vaarwerk, a white man with grey-brown hair and beard, speaks at a press conference. He is sitting in a manual wheelchair, wearing dark pants, a brown windbreaker and light colored shirt. He's also wearing eyeglasses and a baseball hat. His hands are in his pockets. A group of people are standing behind him, in front of a paratransit bus.
    State
    Disabilities Beat: Personal care in New York is about to change
    Emyle Watkins
    In New York, hundreds of organizations administer the Medicaid-funded Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program - or CDPAP. This program allows people with disabilities to hire their own personal care aids, who are paid through these organizations, which are considered fiscal intermediaries, or FIs. But in a last minute curve-ball, the state included a move to a single FI in their state budget.
  • Vicki Vigorito (left) holds a set of headphones to her head. She looks amazed and is looking across the table at Andrea Gustafson (right), who is explaining how the LightSound works. Vigorito has long brown hair with bangs and is wearing a green jacket. Gustafson has curly black hair that fades to a red-pink color and is wearing a black blouse. Gustafson's hands are on the green square box that is the LightSound, on top of a table with a black tablecloth. There are also tactile eclipse books on the table. Behind them is another pink LightSound on a tripod and other people standing behind them on a running track.
    Local
    Disabilities Beat: Did you know you can hear the eclipse?
    Emyle Watkins
    Post-eclipse it seems like most people talked about their visual experience on April 8th. However, across the country, many people experienced the eclipse though a sonification, or a conversion of the light of the sun into sound. WBFO Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins visited Buffalo State on eclipse day to hear how they were using a LightSound device to make the eclipse audibly accessible. Watkins speaks with Dr. Jen Connelly, a disabled astronomer and the associate director of Buffalo State’s planetarium about not only how they made this happen, but why they need more resources like this. Meanwhile, WBFO Reporter Alex Simone took the device with him to a park in Erie County to capture a recording.
  • The Autism and Grief Project Logo is on the left, it is a bold circle with a dotted circle inside of it. Both are blue. Inside the circles is a blue outlined sun coming over a horizon. In the bottom right corner of the logo are the silhouettes of two people hugging. One person is light blue and the other is dark blue. On the right is a headshot of MeiMei Lui, a woman with curly dark hair, freckles and brown eyes. She is smiling and wearing a blue shirt and in-ear headphones.
    Disabilities Beat: Navigating grief when you or someone you love is autistic
    Emyle Watkins
    April is Autism Acceptance Month. While a lot of news this month will focus around what autism is and different programs led by or for people who are autistic, one conversation that isn't had enough is how autistic people experience and navigate grief.
  • The moment of totality during a solar eclipse in Glendo, Wyo., on Aug. 21, 2017.
    Local
    Apps, resources and advice for watching the eclipse when you have a disability
    Emyle Watkins
    WBFO's Disabilities Beat has been covering how people with disabilities can enjoy the eclipse safely and equitably over the past several months. Below you'll find stories you can read for more advice, listen to for interesting interviews, as well as a compiled list of resources that have been mentioned to us.
  • A woman with short white hair sits across from a man with short grey hair wearing glasses at a table with microphones and newspapers. In the background is a window to a producer booth where a man with short black hair, facial hair and glasses sits at a computer with a microphone.
    Local
    How local radio can help make the eclipse accessible to people with disabilities
    Emyle Watkins
    Many local organizations have been finding ways to make the eclipse accessible to people with disabilities, and among them is a local volunteer-driven free radio service for people with vision and print disabilties. WBFO's Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins spoke with Michael Benzin from Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service about how they are using their local radio program to help make the eclipse accessible to people with disabilities.
  • Gail Vaughan, a vision teacher at Williamsville Central Schools, points to the edge of the Perkins Brailler. She uses the brailler to create braille learning materials for students who have vision disabilities. In the photo you see her finger pointing to the grey machine, which has braille on a page coming out of it. Her nails are painted with a black and white design.
    Local
    Disabilities Beat: Tactile images help teach the eclipse, but finding them can be a challenge
    Holly Kirkpatrick
    For students who may be low vision or blind, learning about the eclipse has to include accessible materials, like tactile images. Last week, Reporter Holly Kirkpatrick visited Williamsville Central Schools to speak to Gail Vaughan, the district's teacher for students with vision disabilities and Mark Percy, the district’s planetarium director about the need for more accessible eclipse education materials and how they developed their curriculum.
  • Total eclipse of the Sun. The moon covers the sun in a solar eclipse.
    Local
    Disabilities Beat: Why plain language matters when educating on the eclipse
    Emyle Watkins
    WBFO’s Disability Reporter Emyle Watkins speaks with Thomas Ess, the Vice President for Emergency Management at People Inc, a disability-services agency in Western New York. We discuss why plain language communication matters, how organizations have adapted existing materials for the people they serve, as well as how the eclipse is changing operations for group homes and programs for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
  • A photo of a framed, undated photo of the Catalano family. In the top row on the left is James Catalano, a tall white man with dark buzz-cut hair wearing a dark-colored button down shirt. His brother-in-law Douglas Tubinis is to the right of him, and he's wearing a white button down shirt and has short dirty blonde/brown hair. In the bottom row on the far right is James' mother Barbara Catalano, a white woman with a short haircut with blonde highlights, wearing a dark blouse and red lipstick. James' father Joseph Catalano is in the middle of the photo, he is a white man with white, short swooping hair and is wearing a dark-colored polo shirt. On his lap is James' nephew John Tubinis, a baby boy with blonde/brown hair wearing a white and blue sailor shirt. James' sister Annemarie Tubinis sits to the left of Joseph and John, and she is a white woman with dark shoulder length hair, wearing a dark-colored short sleeve blouse, small hoop earrings and red lipstick.
    State
    Disabilities Beat: How NYS' budget could impact living opportunities for people with disabilities
    Emyle Watkins
    New York is less than a week away from the deadline for the 2025 state budget. Every year, people with disabilities, their families, and the agencies that serve them watch this date closely, because the results of the budget vote will determine living opportunities for tens of thousands of New Yorkers. This week on the Disabilities Beat, we highlight one family's decades-long story of fighting for their loved one's opportunity to live in his community, which is now threatened due to a workforce crisis that many advocates attribute to underfunding in the state budget.
  • Two separate pictures are next to each other. Sydney Hanley (left) is a white woman with Down syndrome who is smiling for the camera at a table with paper, pens and her phone. She has red-blonde hair and is wearing blue glasses and a blue shirt. Madisyn Ross (right) is a white woman with Down syndrome sitting at a table. She is smiling and has brown hair, brown eyes and tortoise-shell printed glasses. She is wearing a blue jacket with plaid cuffs that are rolled back.
    Local
    Disabilities Beat: On World Down Syndrome Day, let’s stop infantilizing adults
    Emyle Watkins
    March 21st is World Down Syndrome Day. You’ve probably met someone with Down syndrome before or know what Down syndrome is, but how often do you talk to people with Down syndrome? In this week’s episode, Disabilities Beat Reporter Emyle Watkins visits GiGi’s Playhouse in Buffalo, which provides a variety of social activities, classes and resources for people of all ages with Down syndrome. We interview three adults living with Down syndrome who share that the biggest barrier to equity might be the simplest to solve: it’s how we talk to and with people with visible disabilities.
  • Stephanie, a white woman with short brown and grey hair smiles for a photo. She is wearing red glasses, a necklace and white windbreaker. There is a white-grey building in the background.
    Local
    Disabilities Beat: A decade-long fight to expand how far paratransit goes in New York State
    Emyle Watkins
    Over the past decade, a local activist has fought for New York State to expand its paratransit system beyond the federal minimum distance it can go. Stephanie Speaker's own experiences with paratransit, the point-to-point public transportation system for people with disabilities, not being able to reach where she needs to go has galvanized her to secure funding and potential legislation that could expand the system. This week, WBFO's Emyle Watkins shares an interview with Speaker from 2023 about her work and why she wants to see paratransit go farther.
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