work
At UO, I led the master’s program in journalism, and continue to teach courses on grammar, writing and journalism.
I’ve played many different roles in the journalism field: investigative reporter, television producer, newsroom leader, journalism educator, community engagement facilitator and program builder. My guiding lights are a passion for building trust, connecting communities and empowering people with information to make informed decisions in a democracy.
I put those values into action as managing editor of the award-winning science and environment unit at Oregon Public Broadcasting, where I helped a team of award-winning environmental journalists explain the complexities of climate change across platforms to a regional audience.
Before OPB, I was an award-winning senior instructor and director of the journalism master’s program at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. I led an effort to redesign our journalism master’s program, and oversaw everything from admissions and cohort-building to funding and curriculum. I continue teaching a popular online grammar course that’s taken by nearly 1,000 students a year.
Read the full report here.
I’m deeply interested in the dynamics of trust and information and co-founded The 32 Percent Project, a national research initiative, to explore the issue. My research partner (and wife) Lisa Heyamoto and I traveled to public libraries across the country hosting community engagement workshops to gain ground-level insights into what drives and disrupts trust in news and information. We presented our findings widely, from conferences such as ONA to a media and democracy forum in Delhi, India. One of our academic papers won the Best Paper award at IAMCR, and I continue building on the community-centered research through an information needs assessment I’m conducting as Engagement Director for the Catalyst Journalism Project.
As a reporter for The Sacramento Bee and The Modesto Bee newspapers, I produced investigative reports that held power to account and elevated community voices. My work provided citizens with information they needed to take on (and eventually shut down) a polluting factory that was sickening children at a neighborhood school. I worked closely with nurses, patients and union leaders to expose a decades-long pattern of patient mistreatment at a psychiatric hospital in California. I uncovered public documents revealing a major housing fraud and charity scam that led then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to pass a new law protecting homebuyers. My work won awards from the Associated Press, California Newspaper Publishers Association and McClatchy Newspapers, and I was a finalist for the Livingston Award. Here’s a book chapter I recently wrote on investigative interviewing techniques.
While I enjoy being out in the field, some of my most rewarding experiences have been as a multimedia editor and newsroom leader — in the U.S. and abroad. I worked as an associate editor at Czech Business Weekly in Prague, Czech Republic, where I guided non-native English speakers from across Europe to produce clear, illuminating coverage of the 2008 financial crisis. In Eugene, Oregon, I served in executive producer and senior producer roles at KVAL-TV, the CBS affiliate, where I oversaw and supported a newsroom staff of 35 journalists.
Here’s me speaking at the City Club of Central Oregon in 2018.
My research and experience has given me a deep understanding of the economics of journalism. I have an MBA from the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business, and have taught entrepreneurship and strategic storytelling at the undergraduate and MBA levels.
I’m a neighborhood advocate and volunteer at my daughters’ public Japanese-language immersion school.
Finally, I’m a regular commentator and speaker on issues of trust, democracy and the future of journalism. You can read, watch or listen to me discuss these topics through the links below:
