What was your first job as a journalist?
Being an omsbudsman for the Charleston Daily Mail (which has since merged with the Charleston Gazette, to become the Charleston Gazette-Mail)
Have you ever used a typewriter?
Yes
How is social media changing news?
I think the biggest impact is that social media dilutes the value of information, and diminishes the reliability of even mainstream outlets
Who's your favorite fictional journalist?
Lois Lane
What does it mean to be a journalist?
To me it means a desire to share fascinating information; it increasingly, though, means teaching people what's false and what's not
How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?
By email.
What tools and software do you use to do your job?
Scrivener, Photoshop, Audacity, Davinci Resolve, python, various AIs, Illustrator, InDesign ...
What's your favorite social network?
Conversation with live human beings
Who do you wish followed you?
Wolves.
Why did you become a journalist?
Because I wanted to be a writer and I was obsessed with learning from original sources (people, for the most part—subject-matter experts)
Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?
Yes. I wrote a humor column, mostly comprised of satire and absurdity
What story are you most proud of writing or working on?
Possibly my story on Portland 'journalist' Mike Shiley, documenting that he'd faked some of the footage in his video
What advice can you offer to aspiring journalists?
Be thorough. Be reliable. Be exacting in the statements you make, and verify EVERYTHING.
When's the best time to pitch you?
In the morning.
What's the worst pitch you ever got?
Don't remember
What's your favorite drink?
Ice-cold water given to me by the proprietors of the ice-cream shop on Saadoun Street in Baghdad, Iraq, on a blistering hot day
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
Training in something that has to do with disaster response/firefighting/technical rope rescue ...
Aside from your own, what's your favorite publication to read?
Haaretz, Ink Stick Media, Lighthouse Reports
What's the most common misperception about your beat?
That if you're writing stories that are critical of the military of your own nation, you are 'undermining freedom' and are 'unpatriotic'
