After 169 years, The Easton Express-Times finally ended its print edition. For the last run, I was back as a freelancer to eulogize my old paper. This was personal. This was where I spent countless nights getting the final headlines to print; where I covered presidents and pandemics, elections and festivals, storms and stories; where I met my wife. The result — over a century and a half of local news in 4,000 words — became the centerpiece of the special section, a final sendoff as a record of local history became history itself.

To find out how a Civil War relic was returning home after many decades, I had to track down one of the collectors involved for an interview. The result is a fascinating glimpse into history and the people who pursue it.

2022 NEW JERSEY PRESS ASSOCIATION AWARD WINNER: PFAS-contaminated wells were slowly being identified in a New Jersey neighborhood, but no one was talking about how extensive the problem really was. I went door to door to find out what neighbors were experiencing, and pressed the issue with local and state officials.

2021 TONER PRIZE WINNER | 2021 OJA FINALIST | SOCIETY OF NEWS DESIGN 2020 AWARD OF EXCELLENCE | 2021 KEYSTONE MEDIA AWARD WINNER: As co-lead reporter in the Swing County, Swing State project, I helped develop unique 2020 Election coverage, including coordinating and writing this centerpiece feature on the diversity of one of Pennsylvania's most important counties. For a month, I headed up and down one county road — at times even going door to door — asking people of different political persuasions to talk about their motivations. The result is an award-winning story told in a way never before seen on our website.

2021 NEW JERSEY PRESS ASSOC. AWARD WINNER: An unexpected benefit from the pandemic shutdowns, air quality was widely reported to have improved. But what did that look like locally? Through collaboration with colleagues at nj.com, I seized an opportunity to take a simple look at a complicated science, collecting and verifying data and seeking context from experts in the field.

This one was personal. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, someone I knew personally became the local hospital's first person to come off a ventilator — and live. In this historic moment, I took it upon myself to tell one family's story.

To cover the local impacts of climate change, I sought out some of the people who already feel it most accutely: winemakers. Going to farms and soliciting industry experts, I sought to explain a complicated topic in a more relatable way. This was done in conjunction with Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of news outlets.

The James Webb Space Telescope is all over the news now, but I interviewed one of the brilliant minds behind it years ago! It was 2007, and Dr. John Mather was fresh off his Nobel Prize in physics for his work with the COBE satellite analyzing leftover radiation from the Big Bang, and I was fresh out of school where I had studied astronomy. I spoke with him (and some of his former high school teachers) at length. The resulting story and sidebar about his research remains a career highlight.