Other Projects

Transmission

The podcast Transmission chronicled the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in the Pacific Northwest for KNKX, covering the scientific advances and the social fallout. The New York Times highlighted the show as one of its “podcasts for the pandemic era” and it won a regional Edward R. Murrow award for best podcast.

I worked on the show as a co-host, producer, and reporter.

Here are some selected episodes:

• Episode 31: “The Long Winter”

• Episode 10: “Learning as We Go”

• Episode 3: “Houseless”

The Breach

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy breached a barrier island off Long Island’s coast. To some, the new inlet was a threat to waterfront houses. The others, it was a symbol of nature’s power of self-renewal. I wrote a story about it for The Atlantic and spoke about my reporting on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show.

The Merkle Hotel

In 2018, I covered the closure of the last residential hotel — or “flophouse” — in Tacoma, Wash. Three years later, I tracked down the residents who were displaced as a way to explore how the disappearance of residential hotels has contributed to the rise of modern homelessness.

The three-part series won a regional Edward R. Murrow award and won first place for audio investigative reporting in the Northwest Excellence in Journalism awards.

NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly featured the series on All Things Considered.

• Part 1: “A developer forced them out of their building. Three years later, nearly half are dead.”

• Part 2: “Extra time, money weren’t enough in a city that left Merkle tenants behind”

• Part 3: “In the loss of the Merkle Hotel, echoes of the history of residential hotels — and the rise of homelessness”

  • NPR: “Tenants at risk of homelessness were evicted from a building. Here's what happened”

  • KNKX: “Will James on telling the story of Tacoma's Merkle Hotel, its final residents”

Ideology, democracy, and information

For KNKX, I developed a beat covering ideology, democracy, and information.

• KNKX: “How liberal Seattle created a powerful conservative influencer: Christopher Rufo”

• KNKX: “Sorting real from fake in a world where AI can create new content”

• KNKX: “Election officials in Washington, and nationwide, flooded with records requests from doubters”

• KNKX: “A WA company sells masks with air holes. Health experts say they offer 'limited to no' benefit”

• KNKX: “As Sequim votes, conspiracy theories and far-right politics swirl in the background”

San Raymundo

I spent a year reporting on Long Island and in Guatemala, in English and in Spanish, to trace the origins of one town’s Guatemalan community back to the first migrant worker to arrive in the 1970s. This was my first story to air on NPR. It also aired on member station WSHU and won a regional Edward R. Murrow award.