JOURNALISM
Featured Work
Longform narrative
The Marshall Project/ProPublica
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting—and basis for the Netflix series “Unbelievable”
“Impeccably reported and written, and completely devastating.”—Fast Company
Nonfiction book
Bison Books
Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for nonfiction
“The most harrowing book I have ever read about college sports.”—Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights
Radio
This American Life, with The Marshall Project and ProPublica
Winner of the Peabody Award
A story about doubt: How it germinated, spread, and eventually took hold of an entire community, with terrible consequences.
Longform narrative
ProPublica/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Winner of the National Magazine Award for feature writing
A house fire reveals one kind of justice for those who own and another for those who rent.
“Riveting and infuriating.”—Seyward Darby, Longreads
Investigative reporting
The Seattle Times
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting
How Washington steered Medicaid patients and others to a cheap but unpredictable painkiller linked to more than 2,000 deaths in the state.
Breaking news
The Seattle Times
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news, awarded to the Times’ staff
The same day that a public official said the deadliest landslide in US history was “completely unforeseen” and “came out of nowhere,” we revealed warnings going back more than a half century.
Longform Narrative:
- An Unbelievable Story of Rape, The Marshall Project/ProPublica
- The Landlord & the Tenant, ProPublica/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
- Black Children Were Jailed for a Crime That Doesn’t Exist. Almost Nothing Happened to the Adults in Charge, ProPublica/Nashville Public Radio
Magazine:
- In dozens of criminal trials, prosecutors have put the same gun in the hands of more than one defendant, The New Yorker/Marshall Project
- Broken on the Wheel, The Paris Review/Marshall Project
- The Suspect, the Prosecutor, and the Unlikely Bond They Forged, Smithsonian Magazine/Marshall Project
- When He Was 16, This Man Threw One Punch—and Went to Jail for Life, Mother Jones/Marshall Project
- The Reporter Who Exposed the Opioid Crisis Has a New Book, but No Job, The New Yorker
Radio:
- Anatomy of Doubt, This American Life (reporter and co-host with producer Robyn Semien)
- The Kids of Rutherford County, Serial (Meribah Knight was the host and lead reporter; I was a co-reporter)
Investigative:
- Methadone and the Politics of Pain, Seattle Times
- Nearly All the Officers in Charge of an Indiana Police Department Have Been Disciplined — Including the Chief Who Keeps Promoting Them, ProPublica/South Bend Tribune
- Convicted of assault and accused of rape, star player received raft of second chances, Seattle Times
- Key UW linebacker played entire season after his bloody print was tied to shooting, Seattle Times
- To Huskies fans a tragic hero, to the courts a wanted felon, Seattle Times
- Meet the Customer Service Reps for Disney and Airbnb Who Have to Pay to Talk to You, ProPublica
- How our hospitals unleashed a MRSA epidemic, Seattle Times
- How bad lawyering and an unforgiving law cost condemned men their last appeal, Marshall Project, The Washington Post
- When lawyers stumble, only their clients fall, Marshall Project/The Washington Post
- The cases your judges are hiding from you, Seattle Times
- Woman’s coma leads to secrecy, silence, Seattle Times
- School district ignored warnings, then silenced girls fondled by teacher, Seattle Times
- Failures by state, caregiver kept secret in child-rape case, Seattle Times
- Twisted ethics of an expert witness, Seattle Times
- Two cops, an ax and many questions on Bainbridge, Seattle Times
Criminal Justice:
Failure of the death penalty in Illinois:
In 1999, I wrote with Steve Mills a five-part series in the Chicago Tribune, revealing fault lines in Illinois’ system of capital punishment. The state’s governor subsequently suspended executions in the state and emptied death row while reciting the findings in our series.
Other criminal justice reporting in the Chicago Tribune:
Trial & Error:
Cops and Confessions:
- Coercive and illegal tactics torpedo scores of Cook County murder cases
- When jail is no alibi in murders
- Veteran detective’s murder cases unravel
- Officers ignore laws set up to guard kids
Texas Death Penalty:
The Trials of Dick Cunningham:
Breaking News:
In 2014, the deadliest landslide in U.S. history killed 43 people near Oso, Washington. I was working a weekend shift the day of the slide. Within two days I found a wealth of geological reports chronicling the hill’s long, dangerous history. For its work on the slide, the staff of the Seattle Times won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. (Here’s a story from Poynter on our work.)
- Risk of Oso landslide ‘unforeseen’? Warnings go back decades
- State allowed logging on plateau above increasingly shaky slope
- Years before deadly Oso landslide, WA used outdated data to allow logging
- ‘So many people yelling for help’
- Oso neighborhood buried in 2014 landslide never should have been built
- Building toward disaster: an interactive graphic
Miscellaneous:
- Dollree Mapp, 1923-2014: “The Rosa Parks of the Fourth Amendment”, Marshall Project
- Draft Overturning Roe v. Wade Quotes Infamous Witch Trial Judge With Long-Discredited Ideas on Rape, ProPublica
- What Happens When Prosecutors Offer Opposing Versions of the Truth?, ProPublica
- Patriot-pundit Longs for the Past (profile of Patrick Buchanan), Chicago Tribune
- The Sneakiest Way Prosecutors Get a Guilty Verdict: PowerPoint, WIRED/Marshall Project
- When the Cops Take Your Urine by Force, Marshall Project
- The Woman Who Spent Six Years Fighting a Traffic Stop, Marshall Project
- How the Supreme Court Made It Legal for Cops to Pull You Over for Just About Anything, Marshall Project
- ‘You’re Really Being an Asshole, Officer’: The law on cursing at cops, Marshall Project
- The Burnout: Missouri keeps killing Jennifer Herndon’s clients. So she invented an alternate life, Marshall Project
- The life and death of Robert Utter, former state Supreme Court justice and death penalty opponent, Marshall Project
Ken welcomes story tips. Contact him to get in touch.