WAMU 88.5 Contributors

Martin Austermuhle

Web Producer

Austermuhle joined WAMU as a web producer and reporter in April 2013. Prior to that, he served as editor-in-chief for DCist.com. Born in Switzerland, Martin lived throughout Latin America before coming to the U.S. to attend Penn State University and later Georgetown University, where he received a Master’s degree in Latin American Studies. He lives in Columbia Heights with his wife Carolina, a school teacher, and 105-pound yellow lab, Santi.


Articles Written by Martin Austermuhle

WAMU 88.5
In the wake of this week's news that another former D.C. legislator admitted to breaking the law, good government activists are renewing their call for the city's legislature to take more aggressive action on reforming campaign finance rules. In a statement, ...
WAMU 88.5
Though Frager's hardware store was destroyed by a four-alarm fire on Wednesday, the Capitol Hill institution will rise from the ashes this weekend only blocks from where it once stood. The store's garden center, which was left somewhat unscathed by the mass...
WAMU 88.5
Former D.C. Council member Michael A. Brown has been charged with bribery for allegedly accepting $55,000 from federal agents posing as D.C. businessmen looking for help in winning city contracts. According to a criminal information filed this morning by U.S. Attorney for D.C. Ron Machen, Brown accepted the money starting in July 2012. In exchange for the money, Brown said h...
WAMU 88.5
A D.C. couple was robbed while eating in the outdoor area of a Logan Circle pizzeria in mid-May, and D.C. police are seeking assistance in finding the suspect. A video of the incident shows an African American man approach the couple as they sat at Pizzoli's Pizzeria on the 1400 block of 12th Street NW at 9:22 p.m. on May 17. He was armed with a handgun, and the couple was rob...
WAMU 88.5
Frager's hardware store on Capitol Hill was destroyed by a four-alarm fire last night, and it didn't take long for residents to pledge to help rebuild it. And even as firefighters keep working to douse remaining hot spots, fundraising efforts have b...
WAMU 88.5
HOW TO HELP Fundraising Efforts for Frager's D.C. firefighters battled a four-alarm fire at Frager's hardware store on Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening, with some 200 firefighters working to extinguish a blaze that ...
WAMU 88.5
On a beautiful Saturday morning in early June, 70 people huddled around their computers at Google's D.C. office. You could call them developers or programmers, but they didn't shy away from calling themselves hackers. But they’re not the type of computer hacker that you might know from popular culture—the renegade tech wizard bringing down the CIA’s website or stealin...
WAMU 88.5
In the wake of the fatal shooting of a taxicab driver in Adams Morgan, a Wednesday D.C. Council hearing on taxicabs turned to what the city can do to keep drivers safe. At the hearing, Council members Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) and Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) expressed concern that drivers are too vulnerable to crime while in their taxicabs. Graham cited the case of Solomon James Okoroh...
WAMU 88.5
D.C.'s park system ranks among the ten best in the country, according to a new report from the Trust for Public Land. The report put D.C.'s parks at sixth in the nation, behind first-place Minneapolis and New York, Boston, Sacramento, and San Francisco. D.C. has 7,679 acres of ...
WAMU 88.5
As Washington, D.C.'s population increases and the housing market picks up again, some of the city's long-time elderly residents run the risk of falling victim to increasing property taxes that they can't afford to pay. Now a group of D.C. legislators wants to help them. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large) today introduced a bill that would exempt certain elderly residen...
WAMU 88.5
Ever dream of singing or strumming in front of thousands of daily commuters? Here's a chance. Metro is hosting auditions for its MetroPerforms! program this evening, allowing the more artistically inclined among us to try and convince transit officials that they should be given a chance t...
WAMU 88.5
D.C. Mayor Vince Gray has gone on record opposing a proposed moratorium on liquor licenses around the U Street NW. At Friday's Washington Blade LGBT Town Hall, Gray said that he didn't think that a moratorium for the nightlife destination was a good idea. "I don't support that. I don't know who's behind it, but I ...
WAMU 88.5
What's becoming one of the city's longest-running regulatory battles has just gotten a bit longer. A D.C. Council committee today rejected a proposed set of regulations for the city's growing network of food trucks, sending them back to the drawing board and further delaying a process that dates back to 2010. The regulations—already on their fourth draft—were s...
WAMU 88.5
Washington, D.C.'s population swells by 79 percent every workday as commuters pour into the city from the around the region, far exceeding similar growth patterns in other large cities across the country. According to new numbers released by the U.S. Census on Thursday, D.C.'s resident population between 2006 and 2010 stood at 584,400, but jumped close to 80 percent when com...
WAMU 88.5
A bill that would require some large retailers in D.C. to pay a wage of $11.75 per hour is expected to be expanded to require all retailers to pay an even higher wage to full-time employees. The original version of the Large Retailer Accountability Act introduced in January limited the living wage requirement to retailers with stores larger than 75,000 square feet and annual r...
WAMU 88.5
Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) will announce on June 8 that he's entering the D.C. mayoral race, making it a trio of legislators vying for the city's top office.  Evans is the D.C. Council's longest-serving member, having been first elected in 1991 in a special election to replace John Wilson. This won't be his first run for mayor—he placed third behind Anthony Wi...
WAMU 88.5
Will it be April 1? Or maybe mid-May? The first week of June, possibly? For now, the date of D.C.'s 2014 primary is up in the air. Though the D.C. Board of Elections has scheduled it for April 1—no joke—legislators and activists debated yesterday whether it should be changed to June, or possibly some other date. Proponents of the idea say that it would offer a res...
WAMU 88.5
D.C. officials said today that a sinkhole that has closed a stretch of 14th Street NW between Pennsylvania and New York Avenues could reopen to traffic as early as Friday, after repairs that are estimated to cost $2 million. The sinkhole was detected last week and closed off most of 14th Street to traffic, though on Thursday one lane was opened up to southbound traffic. Crews ...
WAMU 88.5
The District of Columbia grew by 13,303 residents from July 2011 to July 2012, coming in twelfth on the U.S. Census' list of the fastest-growing cities in that period.  New York City led the charge with 67,058 residents, followed by Houston, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Austin, Pheonix, Da...
WAMU 88.5
The U Street corridor is one of the city's hottest nighlife destinations, with bars and restaurants popping up along U Street and 14th Street NW with surprising speed. But for some residents of the neighborhood, the nightlife isn't to be cheered—and they're hoping to bring it under control by limiting how many new liquor licenses the city can dole out. Yesterday afternoon th...