Benjamin Woodard is a Reporter/Producer covering Chicago's Far North Side.

A Pacific Northwest native, he joined DNAinfo Chicago after graduating with a degree in Visual Journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham. Ben's photographs and stories have been honored with several accolades from the Society of Professional Journalists. His investigative reporting on a university administrator's questionable travel abroad and breaking news reporting on the drowning death of a student won national recognition.

After an internship at a daily newspaper north of Seattle in summer of 2011, Ben and his wife moved to Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood, where he launched RogersParkNews.com, a hyperlocal news site that quickly garnered a dedicated following in one of Chicago's most diverse neighborhoods.

Ben has picked up dozens of bylines in the Seattle and Chicagoland areas as a freelance writer, including for the Sun-Times Media Group, GateHouse Media and the Cascadia Weekly.

Fun Fact: Ben has logged many miles hiking in the Cascade Mountains back home in Washington state, where the peaks reach higher than the skyscrapers of Chicago's loop. At the peak of a mountain one summer, an unexpected thunderstorm thrashed Ben's overnight backpacking group. The Midwest may have big storms, but nothing compares to the shock and awe of a lightning bolt cracking through the air 10 feet from your head — 5,000 feet up.