A chance encounter at a Highland Park laundromat in 2015 changed Sophia A. Reynolds’s career. She was working as a research assistant at a nonprofit when an elderly Filipina woman told her about a landlord systematically pushing out longtime tenants from a rent-stabilized building. Sophia spent six weeks reporting the story for a community blog—and realized she’d found the work she wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Coverage Focus
Now in her eighth year as a journalist, Sophia covers Los Angeles as Neighborhoods Reporter for News of Los Angeles. Her beat spans the hyperlocal stories that slip between the cracks of metro coverage: the Pico-Union street vendor fighting a citation, the Pacoima church converting its parking lot into affordable housing, the South LA block club that’s been meeting every Tuesday since 1987.
Career Path
Before joining the newsroom, Sophia spent three years at LA Taco covering food, gentrification, and neighborhood identity, and two years at Boyle Heights Beat as a bilingual reporter. Her 2022 investigation into unpermitted construction in Wilmington—which revealed a pattern of code enforcement delays in low-income areas—was a finalist for the California Journalism Awards in public service reporting.
Los Angeles Roots
Sophia was born in Glendale and graduated from Cal State Northridge with a degree in sociology before pivoting to journalism. She believes the best neighborhood stories usually come from people who’ve been ignored by institutions long enough to stop expecting anyone to listen.
She currently lives in Echo Park with two very loud parakeets named Vin and Scully.
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