After key sources bail, a reporter embraces flexibility for series on California’s juvenile justice transformation
I undertook an ambitious project for the 2023 California Health Equity Fellowship: A three-part series investigating the closure of California’s century-old juvenile state correctional institutions and scrutinizing the challenges faced by county probation departments in handling youths convicted of serious crimes like robbery, rape and murder.
Why do we build houses in the same way that we did 125 years ago?
In 1969, the federal government announced that it would hand out millions of dollars in subsidies to companies willing to try something new: build houses in factories. Then as now, America was in the throes of a housing crisis.
Five hard-won reporting lessons from a deep dive into California’s child care shortage
There were a handful of moments when I thought my reporting project on California’s child care shortage was going to fall apart.
The cost of self-publishing
A friend (not a writer) recently asked me how much it costs to self-publish a book, understanding that I had self-published my last book. It is a question every writer, whether aspiring or already published in a different form, should know about. There are so many aspects of the question that I’m not sure where to start, but I’ll try to expand my brain enough to answer.
Two weeks that changed America
I was recently asked if there was a defining moment that dramatically accelerated and perhaps made permanent the chaos this nation is presently facing. My answer: the two weeks between March 16 and March 30, 2020.
