Current projects
- The Wall Street Journal (work)
- Exact Change Only (photo/travel blog)
Past projects
- Planet Money (freelance)
- Disclosure Matters (start-up)
- Quartz (contributing)
- UMd College of Journalism (teaching)
- footnoted (freelance)
- YCharts (freelance)
- DealBook (freelance)
- BusinessWeek (work)
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Resume
Experience
| November 2013 – present | The Wall Street Journal | Special writer | Cover corporate news, including executive pay, financial and operational trends, some accounting and corporate tax issues, corporate governance, employer health-care and benefits practices, some pension and retiree benefits issues and more. |
| September 2012 – November 2013 | Disclosure Matters LLC | Principal | Independent research, training & freelance writing business. Contributed to outlets including The New York Times' DealBook blog and Quartz (qz.com), a business news site from the publishers of The Atlantic magazine. |
| January 2013 – December 2013 | University of Maryland | Lecturer | For two semesters, taught a section of Journalism 201, the introductory reporting and writing class, at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism on the College Park, Md., campus. Also helped teach a media literacy course in spring 2013. |
| March 2010 – October 2013 | footnoted | Contributor and senior reporter | Dug through public-company disclosures for hidden details to publish on footnoted.com and in the footnotedPro subscription service for professional investors. Led a major business plan revision, plus designed & built online database tools for internal use, using PHP & MySQL. Occasionally contributed to The New York Times' DealBook blog and spoke to professional organizations. Part of Morningstar Inc. until September 2012. |
| July 2012 – August 2012 | National Public Radio's Planet Money | Blogger | Filled in while regular Planet Money blogger was on leave. I wrote original posts about business and the global economy; turned radio and podcast pieces into blog posts; and helped plan and report data-centered posts featuring charts and graphics. |
| December 2009 – March 2010 | Bloomberg News | Regulatory reporter | Covered housing & derivatives regulation after Bloomberg acquired BusinessWeek. |
| August 2008 – December 2009 | BusinessWeek | Correspondent | Covered business and financial regulation in Washington, D.C., including 2008 election and government response to the financial crisis and recession; wrote a mix of analytic online daily stories and more in-depth magazine pieces. Helped create widely read DC-bureau blog. Appeared regularly in web video segments & occasionally on cable news shows. |
| September 2000 – August 2008 | The Wall Street Journal | Staff writer | Covered health-care, pensions, employee benefits and executive pay issues. Wrote investigative, explanatory and personal-finance articles, spot news, industry trends and more; shot video and helped develop online graphics. Also covered life and property-casualty insurance, mutual funds and stocks. |
| October 1998 – September 2000 | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette | Business writer | Covered nursing-home abuse and neglect, managed care and other health-care issues for the statewide newspaper, based in Little Rock. Also covered economic development, labor and agriculture. Wrote in-depth and spot-news stories under tight deadlines, within beat and beyond. Developed packages, assisted other reporters with research, packaged data for graphics. |
| June 1997 – October 1998 | Daily Record (of Morris County, New Jersey) | Municipal reporter | Wrote regular spot-news, enterprise and in-depth stories; covered crime, schools, government, business, everything else; some courts and general assignment reporting. |
| March 1996 – August 1996 | Publication Services Inc. | Technical production support assistant | Built and maintained databases, proofread, helped develop digital and new-media products. |
| January 1995 – January 1996 | Petersburg Pilot | Reporter-photographer | Covered commercial fishing, logging, tourism, local business, city government, police, courts, everything else in Petersburg, Alaska, pop. 3,400. For six months, filled and edited each 16- to 24-page paper alone. Shot photographs and copy-edited. |
| August 1990 – June 1994 | The Daily Illini | City-state editor, reporter, copy editor | Assigned and edited stories for 20 student reporters at independent daily of the University of Illinois; covered Champaign-Urbana municipal government for a year each; wrote spot news and features. |
Education
| May 1997 | Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Masters of Science in Journalism, with honors |
| May 1994 | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Bachelor of Science in Journalism, news-editorial |
Skills & expertise
General: Strong background with investigative research and reporting; analyzing corporate disclosures, legal filings, regulations and legislation; writing for general and specialist audiences; blogging and breaking news. Some experience with business development and marketing.
Technical skills: Good experience with multiple content management systems, including WordPress and Drupal, as well as web development using PHP, CSS, HTML and Drupal. Coding experience using Python, some Javascript and a little Lua to analyze and present data and to build lightweight internal tools and automate repetitive tasks. Good background with database design and development using SQLite, MySQL and Microsoft Acess. Some experience with Unix, feature photography, and web design. Proficient in German.
Expertise: Financial markets, investing and personal finance, financial regulation, lobbying, publicly traded companies, corporate transparency and disclosure, executive pay, accounting, mutual funds, pensions and retiree benefits, economics, health-care, hospitals, insurance (life, property-casualty and health), retirement issues, nursing-home neglect and abuse.
Awards
2009
|
Friends & Relatives of the Institutionalized Aged
Jack Newfield Award for Excellence in Investigative Reporting
for article on nursing-home evictions |
Association for Women in Communications
Clarion Award for Newspaper Investigative Series
for articles on executive pensions and Social Security* |
2005
|
George Polk Awards
Economics reporting
for series about employers profiting from retiree health plans* |
Scripps-Howard National Journalism Awards
William Brewster Styles Award for Business/Economics Reporting
for series about employers profiting from retiree health plans* |
|
UCLA Anderson School of Business
Loeb Award for beat writing
for “The Short Life of 'Lifetime' Health-Care Benefits"* |
2004
|
UCLA Anderson School of Business
Loeb Award for deadline writing
for team coverage of “The Day Grasso Quit as NYSE Chief" |
New York Press Club
Business reporting award
for “Hidden Roots of the Pension Crisis”* |
2003
|
Pulitzer Prizes
Explanatory reporting
for team coverage of corporate scandals |
George Polk Awards
Financial reporting
for series on firms that benefit by buying life-insurance on workers* |
|
Society of American Business Editors & Writers
Projects
for “What’s Wrong” series on corporate scandals (team) |