About Me

I’m the founder of The Jersey Vindicator, a statewide nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that publishes investigative reporting, plain-English explainers, and solutions journalism about New Jersey government, policy, and power.

I love finding new ways to serve communities and meet their information needs. In 2011, I founded Planet Princeton, one of New Jersey’s leading hyperlocal news websites.

In a rapidly changing media landscape, we can better serve our communities and strengthen democracy by supporting and learning from one another. I enjoy networking with other news leaders and journalism entrepreneurs. I also love exchanging ideas about technology stacks, tools, apps, and other products that help journalists work smarter. I’ve learned so much by participating in peer-to-peer coaching.

Topics I’m particularly interested in include earned revenue for nonprofit news organizations, the foundations of building a successful news nonprofit, push notifications, and AI tools that make newsroom workflows more efficient. I also love all things WordPress. Open-source tools can produce better products by creating greater opportunities for innovation and collaboration. Open systems are better than closed systems because you have a much larger community of experts who are constantly working to improve existing products and create new ones.

As a reporter, covering the COVID-19 pandemic was one of the greatest challenges of my career. There was an overwhelming amount of news to cover, but it was also one of the most important times to be a journalist because news organizations provided communities with vital information that saved lives.

In January 2021, I created a clickable statewide database of COVID-19 vaccination sites because no comprehensive resource existed. It included detailed information about vaccine availability and how to make an appointment at each location. We updated the information in real time and used crowdsourcing to help New Jersey residents find appointments. Our database received more than 6 million views. The project later became part of VaccineNJ.com, a volunteer-powered collaboration that helped Garden State residents get vaccinated. Partnering with developers and students from Princeton University, we created an app that pinged pharmacy sites every five minutes to update our app’s listing of available appointments. The governor’s office on innovation met with our developers and then replicated what we built.

Covering the governor’s COVID-19 briefings, I saw how much the State House press corps and the bandwidth for in=depth reporting had shrunk. That experience convinced me that New Jersey needed a statewide nonprofit news organization focused on investigative reporting and explanatory journalism. That realization eventually led me to create The Jersey Vindicator.

Bio

I was born in Detroit and studied German literature and history at Smith College and the University of Hamburg. I later earned a master’s of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary, initially thinking I might pursue a doctorate or become a college chaplain.

During seminary, I became a chaplain at a maximum-security prison for men in Trenton. There, I met a man who said he was innocent. I researched his case and came to believe he had been wrongfully imprisoned. That experience led me to volunteer for, and later join the staff of, Centurion, a Princeton-based organization that works to free innocent people from prison.

Through that work, I met many reporters and saw that their coverage often prompted action. Those experiences convinced me that I wanted to become a journalist.

After taking journalism classes at New York University, The New School, and The College of New Jersey, I was hired as a reporter at The Trenton Times, where I worked for a decade and was the newsroom’s computer-assisted reporting and public records expert. During my tenure, I also covered education, religion, the federal courts, and local, county, and state government.

In 2006, I moved to Beirut, Lebanon, to become an editor at the Middle East Reporter. I wanted to experience and report on one of the world’s most religiously diverse regions and deepen my understanding of Islam. After returning to New Jersey, I did some work for the Trenton Times again and freelanced for local, regional, and national news organizations and magazines.

In 2011, I launched Planet Princeton, which began as a Facebook page. After attending WordCamp Philadelphia, I became hooked on WordPress and the supportive community that encourages and empowers people to learn how to build their own websites.

My work has been featured in The Washington Post, New Jersey Monthly, and several local and regional publications. I have been interviewed by and frequently cited by NPR affiliates WHYY and WNYC. I have also appeared on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” and NPR’s “Marty Moss-Coane Show.”

From 2019 to 2020, I was a fellow at the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute, where I studied how local news publishers can use push notifications to connect with their audiences. I also worked on a 2019 update of Michele’s List, a national database of hyperlocal news websites.

I have served as a judge for Report for America and as an adviser to the University Press Club, a Princeton University student organization for freelance reporters. In June 2021, I earned a certificate in entrepreneurial journalism through the Journalism Creators Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. I later served as a mentor in the program and have coached other founders of hyperlocal news organizations and journalism startups. I love helping people who want to build new products and organizations. The first and most important question to ask is “What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?”

My reporting has received numerous honors, including the New Jersey Press Association’s First Amendment Award. The Center for Cooperative Media named Planet Princeton its Investigative News Site of the Year in 2019. In 2021, the center honored me with its Excellence in Journalism and Partner of the Year awards. In 2023, I was recognized for my investigative reporting on the abrupt closure of a Princeton nursing home. The Vindicator was honored at the annual Byrne Kean dinner and by the Center for Cooperative Media for our 2025 coverage of the Delaney Hall detention center in Newark. We received three national awards from the Association for Alternative Media for our 2025 work, including first place for our multimedia project about the year in immigration enforcement in New Jersey. We won second place for our coverage of PFAS contamination in Lambertville and second place for news photography.

I have spoken at numerous national journalism conferences, including gatherings hosted by the Online News Association and Local Independent Online News Publishers, as well as at WordPress events. I have also led sessions for nonprofit leaders and volunteers on using social media effectively and working with the press. For a decade, I was a speaker at Princeton Community Works, New Jersey’s largest annual conference for nonprofits.

As a founding board member of Local Independent Online News Publishers, I worked to help create and build the organization to serve hyperlocal news startups across the country. I served on the organization’s finance committee through 2022. I am a member of the Online News Association, New Jersey News Commons, Association of Health Care Journalists, and Investigative Reporters and Editors.

I helped organize WordCamp Philadelphia for three years, serving as lead organizer in 2020, and volunteered at numerous WordCamps across the country for a decade. I stepped away from those volunteer roles to build The Jersey Vindicator, which had a soft launch in August 2023. We hired our first staff reporter in April of 2025.

When I’m not working on journalism projects, I enjoy travel, reading, learning languages, cycling, exploring flea markets, and visiting independent cafes, tea shops, and bookstores. I collect vintage glassware, antique typewriters, and period piece lamps, and also love curling and baseball, traveling long distances by train, and walking along the beach in Ocean Grove.

You can view my resume online.