SERVICES:

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Writing: I’ve authored about 10,000 published news articles, never been sued or credibly accused of a misquote, and won numerous awards for my work. Styles run the gamut from long form, explanatory or investigative pieces to spot news and light features.

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Reporting: I’ve covered just about everything. I spent most of my career covering transportation, terrorism and disaster preparedness. But I’ve also covered courts, crime, politics, growth and development, child welfare, the waste management industry and the U.S.-Mexico border. I covered 9/11, the Yarnell Hill Fire, the Tucson Shooting, the rebuilding of the Bay Bridge, the Oakland Hills Fire, Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War.

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Interviewing: I’ve interviewed tens of thousands of people, everyone from presidential candidates, governors and U.S. senators to hit-men, accused murders and grieving parents. I developed a reputation for long, probing interviews. My styles vary from conversational, biographical or “show-down” interviews to fast-paced breaking news, press conference and reaction interviews.

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Data Analysis: If you can’t measure something you can’t explain it. I use Excel daily. I taught myself SPSS and used it to analyze the records of nearly 50 million U.S. voters for the News21 “Voting Wars” series and to find patterns in nearly 700,000 murders. I am familiar with and have used data visualization tools such as Tableau, infogr.am and others.

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Copyediting: I was the weekend breaking news editor at The Arizona Republic before I left.  My team typically cranked out 10 stories a shift and we never had a lawsuit or major correction. I’ve edited thousands of student stories and judged professional journalism contests.

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Coaching Writers: As an ASU professor since 2011, I’ve taught and coached hundreds of students at one of the best journalism schools in the country. I was asked to redesign the writing instruction for first-year graduate students as well as create tutorials for all undergrads. The Republic tapped me to mentor beginning reporters.

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Narration: I wrote and narrated the script for the News21 podcast and my own “Hot Nights, Cold Trails” documentary about unsolved murders. When one local TV news anchor saw it, he wrote: “You have a voice made for a podcast. I could listen for hours.” I also wrote and narrated scripts for online videos at the Arizona Republic.

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Photography & Videography: I shot some of the footage and photography for “Hot Nights, Cold Trails,” and had photographs published in the Arizona Republic, the Phoenix New Times and for News21.

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Broadcast: I’ve appeared on numerous television and radio news shows as a guest. Appearances include CNN and PBS NewsHour, as well as dozens of local TV and radio broadcasts and was a regular guest on “This Week in Northern California,” a local PBS news roundup show in San Francisco.

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Public Speaking: I’ve been invited to speak at several journalism, fire safety and transportation conferences. After I delivered a keynote presentation at one transportation conference, an industry veteran told me afterwards that my talk was worth $20,000.

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Research: On big stories, I often lead the research. That involves backgrounding key figures like the Tucson shooter or members of a Phoenix terror cell and wading through thousands of pages of technical records for the Bay Bridge investigation. It can also mean pulling information quickly after a document dump, as I did after the Yarnell Hill Fire,  filing successful public records requests, or synthesizing expert sources, reports, documents and data for other writers, as I did for News21.