Category: editing

Tracking the spread of COVID-19

The COVID Tracking Project is a collaborative data journalism effort, launched by The Atlantic in March 2020, that is tracking COVID-19 cases, tests, hospitalizations, deaths, among other metrics, in the United States. CTP is powered by a massive group of volunteers who comb through U.S. state and territory health departments’ dashboard every day to record data in a central place; all data is freely available to the public. CTP’s work has been widely cited by major news outlets, health experts, and government officials.

As co-lead for Editorial, I help manage story flow, editorial process, and write and edit stories about trends in the data. Here’s some of our recent work:

• CTP weekly updates for October 1, September 24, and September 17
• Why CTP’s death count hasn’t hit 200,000

WIRED’s Opinion Section

In August 2016 I took over the Opinion section of WIRED.com, editing pieces by everyone from software engineers to entrepreneurs to academics to FCC commissioners to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

Here’s my write-up of the most-read pieces in 2017.

Among the pieces I’ve edited recently:
– If the FCC Kills Net Neutrality, Congress Will Pay for It, December 2017.
– Evidence That Ethiopia Is Spying on Journalists Shows that Spyware is Out of Control, December 2017
– Self-Driving Car Tech Can Help Another Form of Transportation: Wheelchairs, November 2017
– Equifax Deserves the Corporate Death Penalty, October 2017
– Inmates Need Social Media. Take It From a Former Prisoner, October 2017
– Supreme Court’s Cell Phone Tracking Case Could Hurt Privacy, September 2017
– Why Men Don’t Believe the Data on Gender Bias in Science, August 2017

An Epidemic of Fear: The Aftermath

Wired, November 2009

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In 2009 Wired published a brave piece by Amy Wallace entitled, “An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All.” The piece was hugely controversial — a year later, readers were still sending letters about it.

In the weeks following the story’s publication, Wired launched a blog, which I edited, providing some of the background reporting that didn’t make it into the story. A group of reporters also answered readers’ questions and covered news of a mumps epidemic in New York.

As the editor of Wired‘s letters section, I was also charged with condensing close to 1,000 reader responses into two pages in the print magazine. Read that letters section here. I discussed the challenges of editing that section in this Storyboard podcast.

Talk of the Nation: Return to Sender

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National Public Radio, November 2008

For years, Wired invited readers to send us artwork through the mail, sans packaging. It was partly a test to see what the USPS would handle. Over the years we received everything from a surfboard to a giant DNA helix to a navel orange. When we discontinued the contest in 2008, I wrote about its demise in the magazine. Then I discussed it with Neal Conan on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation.

Red Herring

I joined Red Herring, a monthly magazine about the business of technology, during the ascent of the dotcom bubble. First I managed the magazine’s sizeable editorial research team, which provided data-driven stories to the print and online divisions of the magazine. Later, I edited Forward, the magazine’s front-of-the-book section. Below, some of my writing clips:

The battle over digital television, September 2002 [PDF]

Branding for dummies: August 2002 [PDF]

Palm’s recovery strategy just might work: January 2002 [PDF]

How to protect your DNA from unauthorized use, October 2001 [PDF]

Dinner with The Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell: March 2001

Venture capital in Washington: October 2000 [PDF]

Scandal at Utah tech company Cimetrix: September 2000

Oxygen Media goes for gold: May 2000