My work
Below you can find an extensive portfolio of my work over my entire professional career as a journalist, including articles as well as some graphics, photos and videos.
Here’s five key articles that best encapsulate my experience and talents:
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Data journalism: The 2018 congressional elections, everyone agreed, were dominated by the suburbs. But what counted as a suburban district? To answer this question, I created the CityLab Congressional Density Index, a novel way to categorize each district by the different types of neighborhoods that make it up, which fueled a half-dozen data-driven articles of my own, and was also taken up by a host of other major outlets as a tool in their own coverage. -
Investigation: It began with a dead body, and then exploded into a scandal tying in Chinese investors, a U.S. Senate race, Egyptian antiquities and a Virgin Islands shell company. I covered the story relentlessly, then boiled a year’s worth of reporting into a basic primer to help readers keep track. My favorite piece was a profile of one of the key players in the scandal, insightful despite the subject’s complete refusal to cooperate.
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Explanatory journalism:
A detailed explainer of Minnesota’s complicated road network, including custom maps and charts. See also this companion piece on mass transit. -
Feature writing: Deep profiles of the two major candidates in a hotly contested Minnesota congressional race: the former talk radio host with no regrets for his provocative on-air statements or his shifting career path, and the health care executive whose life was shaped by a legal battle to adopt a son with her same-sex partner in 1990s Tennessee.
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Policy coverage: Two months of the 2017 Minnesota legislative session were dominated by a battle over how to stabilize the state’s insurance market. I wrote an explainer of the policy lawmakers ultimately adopted more than two months before it became law, then continued to cover and explain the issue throughout the session.
Some of my code and data can be found on my Github page as well as the Github pages I created for CityLab and the Pioneer Press.
My personal writings can be found at the main page of this website.
My history podcast, The Siècle, can be reached at thesiecle.com or wherever you get podcasts.