Editing
Award-winning international journalist and newsroom executive with more than a decade of experience transforming complex topics into powerful stories at media organizations, nonprofits and development institutions. Motivating leader and coach with a passion for guiding colleagues in impactful, collaborative work.
Deputy standards and ethics editor at Politico. Former editor-in-chief of Global Press Journal, China correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, national politics reporter for The Boston Globe, tech policy reporter for Politico, education and state politics reporter for The Dallas Morning News, editorial consultant for the World Bank. Lived and worked in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. Obsessive runner, toddler mom and Washingtonian.
Editing
MUTARE, ZIMBABWE — The young men brace for the first shock of cold water as they enter the river, easing their way into another day of illegal gold mining. David Mauta and Wisdom Nyakurima, both 18, stand knee-deep in the Odzi River near the eastern Zimbabwe mining city of Mutare and shovel gravel onto a woven mat. They hinge their hopes on finding flakes of shiny gold. But it’s another metal whose dangers they don’t recognize that may have a more lasting impact.
GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - The cocoa industry in this eastern stretch of DRC had all but disappeared when Alexis Kalinda Salumu decided to try and save it. Years of armed conflict had forced farmers to abandon their fields and nearly destroyed production in his home of Walikale, a forested region with thick, juicy soil.
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO - Even the skeletons looked different this year. Their white frames disappeared under frilly dresses; sunken black eyes glistened with purple eye shadow. The rows of ornate "catrinas" that lined Mexico City's markets hinted at a cultural shift.
ELEGU, UGANDA - It didn't rain the day 2-year-old Raymond Giga was found submerged in water next to the bed he shared with his mother. But the River Unyama still poured in from the east and swallowed him, says Raymond's mother, Sylvia Gimono, her eyes wet with tears.
MANNAR, SRI LANKA - Sanchon Salamon Thuram scours his books on microorganisms, surrounded by garden equipment, a dog and a cat. The house is quiet; the 76-year-old lost his wife several months ago and wanted to die too. But gnarled knubs of turmeric have become his salvation.
ZVISHAVANE, ZIMBABWE - Monica Ndlovu pops a white pill into her mouth and chases it with water. She eyes her packet, still full of round brown pills - the ones that would allow her menstrual cycle to start. She can't afford to get her period.
Asia Politics/Economy
Farmers often stop to stare at the cement trucks running through their cornfields outside this dusty, frigid town south of Beijing. They're watching the destruction of their livelihoods for the promise of a more prosperous future. Chinese President Xi Jinping stood in nearby fields in April to herald a project "crucial for the next millennium."
A highway built by China threads almost all the way from Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, to this scruffy fishing town on the country's southern tip, where Buddhist chants mark the time of day and wild elephants occasionally lumber through.
GUANGZHOU, CHINA - Inside a cramped dorm room on the campus of South China University of Technology, Yin Hao leads an operation to decode American politics. The 29-year-old engineering student records every Sunday news show, listens to podcasts from MSNBC's Rachel Maddow as he walks to work, and scours Mike Allen's "Playbook," a DC-insidery newsletter for Politico.
China became the world's manufacturer because it offered cheap, plentiful labor and a ready supply chain. In Lipu, workers produced billions of hangers that filled closets from Savannah, Ga., to Stockholm. These same factories now struggle to find workers, as wages rise and the population grays.
Two weeks after Xi Jinping ascended to China's most powerful post, he took his top lieutenants to a history museum. The seven men wore nearly identical black jackets. They stopped at an exhibit titled "The Road to Rejuvenation."
New Zealanders call their seat of power the Beehive, a sparkle of Kiwi humor for a spiraling concrete building that looks exactly as it sounds. On the ninth floor, the country's leader greets visitors in an unassuming office with posters of women in wartime and a view of the Wellington harbor.
Most foreign veterans who arrive in this swampy stretch of the Mekong Delta make their way to the Oasis Hotel. The two-story, pale-yellow building on the Ben Tre River boasts a small pool near the open-air dining area and cold beer. They come looking for solace, something stronger than the support groups and pills.
The loudspeakers crackle on soon after sunrise, bathing the village of Nanmiao in Communist Party dictates. As China's leaders hold a twice-a-decade party congress in Beijing, hamlets such as this one have turned on rusty speakers, or installed new ones, to spread the word directly to the people.
Mongolia flagged its neutrality. Sweden offered its expertise. South Korea knew a spot. In the end, President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un settled on the tiny, orderly island of Singapore to hold a historic summit on June 12 that could peel open the world's most reclusive and threatening country.
A search that began as a quest for shelter became just as much a lesson in understanding the city and its people.
In front of Ho Chi Minh's statue and the baroque yellow walls of Communist Party headquarters, they danced. Strobe lights and bass washed over sweaty young bodies twisting in the tropical night air. The DJ took a selfie with the crowd, and the din on this downtown promenade blended with the roar of motorcycles cruising along the Saigon River.
Nearly two centuries ago, Chinese workers stir-fried an amalgam of home and sold it in America. Last month that legacy returned to China in a steaming pile of fried honey chicken and scallion pancakes. P.F. Chang's, the Scottsdale, Ariz., chain that made its name off American-style Chinese food, just opened its first restaurant in Shanghai on the eighth floor of a high-end mall.
U.S. National Politics
Rhonda Oberg, who took over Nita-Faye Flowers and Gifts nearly 12 years ago, is exactly the kind of business owner who would benefit from a religious freedom law that could allow her to deny service to same-sex couples based on her religious beliefs.
Iowa is on the frontline of the draft Warren movement, a $1.25 million effort funded by liberal groups MoveOn.org and Democracy for America, who have chosen the country's first caucus state as a cornerstone for their push. An event in Fairfield last weekend, one of 11 in Iowa and more than 200 nationwide, embodies the effort: scrappy, earnest, ambitious, and potentially pointless.
Meet the other Bernie Sanders - the guy who's actually pretty good at retail politics. The one more willing to risk a joke. The one who slaps strangers on the back, pauses for selfies, admits a frustration with Legos, and drops references to Kim Kardashian into his stump speeches.
Old mill towns like Fall River, where the scars of previous trade agreements run deep, are the types of places Obama needs to convince that the Trans-Pacific Partnership will boost American jobs rather than devastate them. That's critical to gaining the support of Democratic representatives, who are largely opposed to an upcoming bill the White House considers necessary to propel the deal forward.
Here in Mingo County, which has lost hundreds of coal industry jobs, a 12.1 percent unemployment rate leads the state and is twice the national average. As a result, a half-century after John F. Kennedy worked to address West Virginia's poverty and after Democrats have directed billions of dollars in "earmarks" to boost local fortunes, the party faces its biggest challenge here in generations.
"If it wasn't so sad, it would have been comical," Moulton said in an interview as he recounted his VA odyssey. In addition to enduring missing records and computer glitches, Moulton said, he was prescribed the wrong medicine, which in his case did not imperil his health but is in the category of a medical error that can be extremely dangerous in some cases, even fatal.
Tech /Healthcare
Fight for the Future, the name Tiffiniy Cheng and her friends bestowed on their group of 30-something dreamers with no office , helped stir an online advocacy movement that swayed the White House, influenced the Federal Communications Commission, and helped defeat the telecommunications industry, one of the most powerful lobbying shops in Washington.
If you follow China's bold ambition to join the great space powers, it will eventually lead you here, to the neglected eastern edge of steamy Hainan island, in a speck of a village that doesn't appear on most maps. Rocket replicas and signs for Wi-Fi welcome visitors past coconut trees and peppers grown from seeds bred in space.
The contraption straddles half of a four-lane road. Arctic blue and nearly a quarter the length of a football field, the bus-train hybrid looks like a prop built for a "Transformers" sequel. A passenger compartment hovers above the asphalt, designed so cars can zip beneath as riders glide above the gridlock.
Maine's fisherman are among the thousands who could lose insurance if the Supreme Court rules against the administration in a pending decision that could upend the federal health care law and leave more than 7 million people without coverage.
The doctor told Renee Gao's parents that the tumor in their teenager's chest wasn't disappearing. The girl would need a costly operation that could leave her sterile - if she survived. Then he ushered them out.
The patients filed into a drab, gray-paneled room, clothes hanging from skeletal frames. One young woman held a plastic bag of cookies. Visitors looked up at the hospital's faded Chinese New Year decorations and pretended not to notice their entrance.