Experience

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  The Colorado Independent

  • Greater Denver Area

  • Managing Editor/Columnist

    • Aug 2016 - Present
    • Greater Denver Area

    We're a small news organization and all of us wear many hats, but my primary duty is running the newsroom. I manage a full-time news staff of three, am responsible for copy flow, editing, marketing. I also oversee our summer interns, mentoring them over the course of semester or summer. In addition, I assist with newsletters, weekly digests, audience engagement and general public outreach, including panel presentation and moderation of debates.

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  Richmond Magazine

  • Richmond, Virginia Area

  • News Editor/Columnist

    • May 2015 - Jul 2016
    • Richmond, Virginia Area

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  The Washington Post

  • Staff Writer

    • Jul 2014 - Jan 2015

    Storyline was a digital initiative of the Washington Post that sought to ground public policy in the day-to-day lives of individuals using long-form narrative. Among the pieces I wrote for the Post during this time were an exploration of Colorado's black market in marijuana after legalization, a factory in North Carolina that hired only refugees, the success of long-acting contraception in Colorado and the closure of the Trump casino in Atlantic City.

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  Style Weekly

  • Richmond, VA

  • News Editor

    • Jul 2013 - Jun 2014
    • Richmond, VA

    • Freelance Columnist and Journalist - March 2013 to present.• Project Writer - The Piton Foundation - July 2012 to March 2013. Wrote a series of columns on The Children’s Corridor, 14 Denver metro neighborhoods with high child poverty rates.• City Columnist, Denver Post - 2001 to 2002 and 2009 to 2012. Three-times-weekly column focused on Denver's overlooked people and places. Coverage included a national award-winning series on the state's poorest neighborhood.• City Columnist, Rocky Mountain News - 2002 to 2009. Coverage included two yearlong projects, one on a Denver high school struggling with the high Latino dropout rate, the second on how immigration, legal and illegal, changed one Denver block.• Project Reporter, Rocky Mountain News - 1998 to 2000. Long-form narrative projects included a series on life in a suburban high school a year after the Columbine shootings.• Project Reporter, Albuquerque Tribune - 1994 to 1998. Projects included national-award winning series on the legislative battle to expand Indian gaming in New Mexico.• Regional Reporter, Los Angeles Times - 1988 to 1994. Covered communities south of Los Angeles, including Long Beach and Compton. Contributed to Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the Los Angeles riots with a story on the mayhem in Compton.

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  The Piton Foundation

  • Contract Writer

    • 2012 - 2013

    I wrote several columns describing The Children's Corridor, a 14-mile stretch of north and east Denver and Original Aurora. The Corridor is home to more than 50,000 children, four in 10 of whom are born to mothers living in or at high risk of falling into poverty. Through storytelling, The Piton Foundation sought to reveal the challenges and opportunities presented in neighborhoods characterized by dramatic demographic change-- largely the result of immigration and refugee resettlement -- as well as by high rates of births to teen mothers and mothers without a high school education. The stories also included an examination of demographic change and births to teen mothers, as well as a profile of the Piton Foundation's founder, Sam Gary.

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  The Denver Post

  • City Columnist

    • 2009 - 2012

    Three times weekly column reported out of the city's many diverse neighborhoods and communities. Focus on education, immigration, history, poverty, youth, veterans, the people who rarely drew attention to themselves but who strove in that quiet, daily way to better themselves and their communities.

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  the Rocky Mountain News

  • city columnist

    • 2002 - 2009

    Twice-weekly city columnist with focus on neighborhood life, immigration, education, Hispanic culture and politics. Devoted one year to a series of more than 55 columns on a high school struggling to curb the high Latino dropout rate. Spent another year writing about a single Denver block shared by U.S. citizens and Mexican immigrants, some of whom crossed the border legally; most of whom did not. "Border Street" sought to go beyond the polarizing rhetoric surrounding illegal immigration to reveal the day-to-day story of conflict and collaboration. Both were award-winning series.

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  The Albuquerque Tribune

  • project reporter

    • 1994 - 1998