I’m a writer living in London, U.K.
I was recently and briefly editor in chief of the upstart global photo and news agency, Demotix.
For five years prior I worked as an investigative reporter, chiefly at Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon, and at its sister paper in New Mexico, the Santa Fe Reporter. Both papers enjoy a reputation for courage and doggedness. WW was the first alt-weekly to win a Pulitzer Prize in investigative journalism.
Previously, I worked at another alt-weekly in Augusta, Georgia, at a short-lived English-language daily in Bangkok, Thailand, and at the Columbia Journalism Review in New York City. I’ve written for Foreign Policy, Slate, Salon, The Awl, The American Prospect, CJR, CounterPunch and the Bangkok Post, among others. I’ve appeared on NPR, Al Jazeera English, CBS News and on many local radio and TV programs around the U.S.
In 2010, I founded War Is Business, a website that covers military contracting and the arms trade, and serves as a unique public directory identifying the people who profit from war.
This site is mainly an archive for work published elsewhere, although, who knows, maybe I’ll blog once in a while. I built it myself because I enjoy tinkering. I also like taking pictures while on the road; that picture on the top-of-page banner is some grafitti I saw in Greece.
I grew up in an orchard house in rural Washington State, with a rotary phone on a party line. Now I have a smartphone. An improvement? I’m undecided.
Melissa Amos snapped that portrait, above.