Category Archives: Work

Work

Going Green

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A few days after the Atlanta Falcons’ already legendary meltdown in Super Bowl LI, I caught a morning flight from Oakland to Seattle for a packed day of interviews at the HQ of Grist, the scrappy non-profit environmental news publication that’s been going and going and going for nearly 20 years.

And starting last month, I became a senior editor there, leading Grist’s coverage of environmental justice — basically people’s rights to clean air, clean water, and clean land. It’s important, mission-driven work that combines my experience in science journalism with the accountability-type work I did at Al Jazeera America and via my Ida B. Wells fellowship. And with the Trump administration’s apparent eye toward rolling back environmental regulations, this feels like it could be my most impactful gig to date.

My first day wasn’t just packed with normal onboarding. Instead, I spent an hour or so talking to Mustafa Santiago Ali, the recently resigned head of the Environmental Protection Agency’s environmental justice program. Ali packed his bag after decades of service at the agency because he doesn’t see the EPA administrator Trump installed, Scott Pruitt, as a kindred soul. (Click here to read an edited transcript of my interview with Ali.)

 

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Work

Ida B. Wells Fellow

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So that whole Al Jazeera experiment didn’t work out. I did some work I’m very proud of and got to work with some really talented journalists who I’m proud to call my friends. But launching a broadcast-focused media brand is just a heavy lift in today’s market.

While I was sad to see the channel go, I was totally distracted by Sid’s birth and the first few months of his life. But by March, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with literally months of reporting on a controversial guest worker program.

Enter The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, which was looking for four people of color to help with their first long-term investigative project. I applied wondering if the legwork I’d done might give me a leg up on other candidates. And he we are a few weeks later, and I got the fellowship!

I’m excited and humbled by the opportunity. And I’m hoping to live up to the woman whom the fellowship is named after, a daring investigative reporter and newspaper publisher who exposed the use of lynching in the Deep South not as a tool to punish the crimes of black people but to intimidate them and keep the community as a whole down.

 

Radio, Sports, Work

I Was on the Paul Finebaum Show

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A lot of people call into the Paul Finebaum Show daily to talk about SEC football, so it’s not necessarily that big a deal to be on it. But I was an invited guest this past Thursday.

Paul or one of his producers wanted me to discuss my Atlanta Magazine article on UGA Head Football Coach Mark Richt. It was pretty difficult trying to stay cogent and not ramble during the five to 10 minutes that I was on with Paul. But I was really excited to be featured, and I hope I one day get to do it (and other radio spots) again.

The highlights of the interview are here.

Atlanta Magazine, Work

The Moral Victor

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Over the past 15 years or so, I’ve spent an obscene amount of time thinking about Mark Richt. For the previous 14 seasons, he’s been the head coach of the University of Georgia football team, whose games I grew up watching with my parents.

Richt is a complex figure in an increasingly monied and cutthroat sport. He’s seen as a “molder of men,” who cares about the person under the helmet, as much as he cares about his team’s on-field results. It’s led many to question whether he’s too virtuous to win on the biggest stages college football has to offer—despite the fact that he’s paid $4 million per year to do just that. And that’s the premise of the feature I wrote for Atlanta Magazine about him.

Read: “Hail Mark.”

Al Jazeera America, Science, TV, Work

The Death of Aging

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This past week, the first TV show that I helped produce aired on Al Jazeera America and Al Jazeera English. It was an episode of “Fault Lines” titled “The Death of Aging.” and it explores technology billionaires’  funneling millions of dollars toward several efforts at reversing aging and increasing human longevity.

It was an amazingly fun project to work on, especially thanks to the production team of Sweta Vohra, Josh Rushing, and Joel Van Haren. I was lucky enough to get a co-production credit and was able to help on a number of fronts, from researching, reporting, setting up shoots, holding light reflectors, writing interview questions, scripting, and perhaps most importantly, hounding J. Craig Venter’s wife (who is also his publicist) until she agreed to let us go behind the scenes of his new venture Human Longevity, Inc.

Watch it:

 

Archaeology, Science, Work

The First Americans

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In late-2010, I knew nothing about archaeology. After three-plus years as a senior editor at Archaeology, I consider myself knowledgeable on at least one arcane subject: the peopling of the Americas.

I just finished a large project that I spent a lot of the last year reporting for Archaeology. It included meeting a lot of great characters, as well as a trip to the Paleoamerican Odyssey conference in Santa Fe, NM, last October. It was an occasionally testy meeting with prominent archaeologists whose theories had been summarily dismissed for decades by their peers finally having their day in the sun.

I would have never guessed it, but I find this topic really exciting.

Read: “America, in the Beginning.”

Atlanta Magazine, Science, Work

Turtle Power!

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When my old friend Steve, who is now the editor in chief of Atlanta Magazine got in touch last summer with the idea of writing about sea turtles on the Georgia coast, I jumped at the chance to revisit some places that I haven’t been since I was a kid, like Jekyll and St. Simon’s Islands.

Probably the coolest part of reporting this story was getting to go on to a Georgia barrier island that very few people get to go to. Ossabaw Island is essentially a barely inhabited sanctuary maintained by the state. Mark Dodd of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources was nice enough to drive me around the island until we got to see one of the feral pigs that have overrun Ossabaw since the Spanish brought them in the 1500s.

Another cool piece of trivia: One of the few people I know who have ever been to Ossabaw is actually my wife, Kiera. She went pig-hunting on the island in 2011 on assignment for Mother Jones.

Read: “Guarding the Nest.”

 

Work

Watch Al Jazeera America

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AlJazAmI don’t normally shill for upstart cable networks—at least I never did for Current TV, MSNBC, or a newbie like Fusion—but you need to watch Al Jazeera America. For one, it has excellent, objective, news coverage with an international point of view and no punditry. Second, they now pay my bills.

After about nine months of working from home for Archaeology, I realized that I had a frighteningly small social circle on the west coast. My isolation drove me to answer an ad forwarded via a friend of my fiancee. Al Jazeera America—or as my friend called it, “the journalism rapture,” for the number of people it was hiring in 2013—was looking for a digital producer for its acclaimed current affairs show “Fault Lines.”

I got the job, and I’m excited to work with what seems like a dedicated team of producers to cover some of the most important issues in the world. I’ll be helping to run the show’s website and build web content to augment and supplement the show’s episodes. It’s a very exciting time out here on the left coast!

(Also, just to make sure all my bases are covered: Everything on this blog constitutes my personal views and not those of any place where I currently work or a place where I have worked.)

Friends, Misc., Work

Coming Up Small

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I’ve been a fan of Atlanta’s three major sports teams for as long as I can remember. For at least 25 years of support and occasional bouts of deep devotion, these franchises—the Hawks, the Falcons, and the Braves—have delivered one championship. (“The one World Series no one wanted to win,” according to Bill Simmons.) You don’t have to be a financial whiz to know that’s a garbage ROI.

A few of my friends have challenged my contention that Atlanta’s teams make it the most miserable sports city. My friend Samir cannot be convinced that Cleveland is not the rightful occupier of that throne, between Lebron’s decision, the Browns becoming the Ravens and then winning the Super Bowl, “The Drive”, “The Catch”, etc. Greg, another close homey, is from Seattle, a long suffering sports city with a paucity of titles and a former basketball team (currently named the Oklahoma City Thunder) that is probably the most fun team to watch in the NBA.

On the occasion of the Falcons unceremoniously crashing out of the playoffs this past January, we decided to blog our myriad frustrations from our hometowns. Joined, from time to time, another of my friends, Dave Zuckerman (a tortured Beltway sports fan), we’ve whined, kvetched and boohoo-ed over here, at Coming Up Small.

Take a look and let us know what you think.

Work

My Indiana Jones Phase

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The cover of the first issue of Archaeology that I worked on as a member of its staff.

This post is way overdue, as I’ve been working at Archaeology magazine for a while now. Anyway, yes, that happened. My former managing editor at Seed, Claudia Valentino, plucked me out of the freelance ranks (just as a lot of my regular gigs were hitting transitional moments) and brought me on staff at Archaeology, where she recently became editor in chief. (Claudia doesn’t have a website, so I’ll just link to this story she recently wrote for More.)

As an opportunity, this is huge. I haven’t been able to do a lot of magazine editing thus far in my career, given the explosion in web properties and demand for more quickly produced content. I am really excited to acquire some new skills. And I know Claudia is an ideal shepherd for me improving my craft.

An immense bonus to this new venture is that Archaeology‘s deputy editor is my close homey Samir Patel. We’ll likely hang out and talk music and sports all day. (I mean, when we’re not editing and writing archaeology pieces.)