Thanks for visiting. I’m an independent reporter, writer, and editor with 28 years of experience in print and web, and significant experience in radio, podcast, and television journalism. I'm currently on contract as the investigations editor for The California Newsroom, a collaboration of public radio stations, with NPR as its national partner.
I'm an Emmy-winner and two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award (2008, 2012) whose reporting and writing have appeared in Outside, Wired, GQ, Men's Health, Los Angeles magazine, and many other publications large and small. You can use the menu to see selected work.
People often ask me what kinds of articles I write. The answer is, “all kinds.” I’m a generalist, not a specialist. I do not have a beat, but my favorite stories to report, write, and edit usually have to do with matters of public interest. For the last 15 years or so, I’ve mostly been writing and editing deeply reported, long-form articles, but I also write, or have written, the occasional essay, and a lot of “service journalism” pieces or packages. While many of my stories require a long bake time (several months, and sometimes a year or more), I also turn around quicker stories that take anywhere from one day to a few weeks to report and write.
I’ve written about crime and criminal justice, sexual abuse in sports, gun violence, health and fitness, cancer-stricken nuclear-weapons workers, immigration and the border, urban wildlife, business, drug policy, travel, adventure sports, yoga, illegal cannabis farming, and a range of people who do, or have done, interesting things. I’ve interviewed gun violence and sex trafficking victims in San Bernardino and South L.A., traced the movements of an alleged sexual predator on two continents, tracked cougars in the Santa Monica Mountains, trekked with llamas in the Sierra Nevada mountains, listened to music in near-silence with one of the greatest-ever record producers, trained with federal law enforcement agents, and cruised in a red Cadillac with a special-needs peacock named Radagast.
Subjects tell me I’m a good listener. Editors and readers say I’m good at making complicated stuff easy to read without dumbing it down, but my work can also be as fun and funny as it is serious and important. Writers appreciate my knack for making their work better while allowing them maintain their voice.
I live in Los Angeles. Maybe we can work together.
(Photograph courtesy of Michael Darter)
