Author: Joanna Pearlstein

Tech Workers Are Major Funders of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign

In August I mined public data from the US Federal Election Commission to determine where Presidential candidates were getting their donations. Since individuals have to specify their employer when they make political contributions, it’s not difficult to identify which employers’ workers are interested in which candidates.

The results: The companies whose workers sent the most money to Hillary Clinton read like a list of who’s who in Silicon Valley, with Google workers sending more than a quarter million dollars to the Democratic nominee in a three-month period. Trump, meanwhile, collected the most money from workers at a real estate company in Mobile, Alabama.

Mapping Presidential Candidates’ Political Donations

In August 2016 I reported on the diverse geography of political candidate contributions, drawing on public data from the US Federal Election Commission.

One fun finding: While New York generally votes Democratic, Manhattan is neatly divided into red and blue halves: westsiders donated heavily to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, while the east side, where Trump Tower is located, sent cash to the Republican nominee.

The Thinking Eater’s Guide to Food

I came up with the idea for WIRED’s August 2016 cover package, which we nicknamed the Thinking Eater’s Guide to Food. The goal was to help readers synthesize competing issues of environmental concerns, nutrition, and scalability. I also wrote a story explaining what foods readers should turn to during the never-ending California drought. The package was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the Leisure Interest category in 2017.

Previously, I had analyzed a research paper about water consumption of different crops to create the WIRED guide to produce that won’t make the drought worse.

 

Silicon Valley Daycares Still Have Vaccination Problems

In 2015 while browsing a huge database from the California Department of Public Health (like you do), I discovered that some of the daycares associated with large technology companies had dismal rates of vaccination among their students. The implication: That employees of said companies were not vaccinating their children.

I reported that story here and here. When new data for the 2015-2016 became available, I checked to see if immunization rates had improved and described the verdict here.

The Sickeningly Low Rate of Vaccinations at Silicon Valley Day Cares

In February I reported on the vaccination rates at daycares associated with Silicon Valley companies. In my investigation I found that the childcare centers affiliated with several large companies — Google and Pixar among them — had unusually low rates of vaccinations among young children.

I followed up on the story here and here.

I discussed my reporting on CNBC’s Power Lunch show.