writing
My writing life ranges from daily writing on reality blurred to longform journalism.
If you want to know more about my work, it’s all here, archived by publication. Explore below, or start with these stories:
- After facing some big challenges, Marc Summers is back for the 30th anniversary of Double Dare, The Los Angeles Times. A profile of 1980s and 1990s TV star Marc Summers, which traces his career from then until now, including his recently staged autobiographical play.
- Why there is less reality TV on television this fall, The Los Angeles Times. A diagnosis of what’s ailing the nonfiction entertainment industry. In one word: fear.
- Married at First Sight, Now in a Lasting Relationship, Pacific Standard. Couples in arranged marriages created for a television show have something to teach the rest of us about how to sustain a healthy relationship.
- Reality on the High Seas, Playboy. I traveled to the Faroe Islands to report on the intersection of environmental activism, local tradition, and documentary reality television. This story won the Society for Professional Journalists’ Sunshine State Award for magazine feature reporting.
- How Survivor challenges are constructed, NPR. From behind the scenes of the 19th season of Survivor in Samoa, a look at what it takes to create a reality TV challenge.
- Will Shark Week Get Back to Reality This Year?, Vulture. Discovery Channel’s new leadership explains how they intend to shift Shark Week away from two years of ratings-generating fake documentaries.
Pacific Standard
Pacific Standard is a magazine that “tells stories about society’s biggest problems, both established and emerging, and the people attempting to solve them.”
Los Angeles Times
The Washington Post
Playboy
My journalism in Playboy includes two feature stories.
NPR
I wrote, reported, and narrated several feature stories and one commentary for NPR.
HitFix
I contributed to HitFix’s reality television coverage.
The Daily Beast
My reporting and essays for The Daily Beast covers subjects from The Bachelor to a Harry Potter theme park attraction’s storytelling.
magazines and more
All of the other stories I’ve written for web publications, print magazines, and other outlets are archived here.
newspapers
Articles published in newspapers, in print and online.
msnbc.com
Starting in 2004, I contributed to the entertainment coverage at msnbc.com, later known as NBC News,then the most-popular news web site. I primarily wrote about television, and served as the interim TV editor for a period of time.
Student.com
For two years, I wrote television criticism for Student.com, an early online magazine that went away when the dot-com bubble burst. As TV critic for the magazine, I wrote weekly reviews of TV shows and highlighted upcoming shows. As a staff writer and summer intern, I wrote features and reported pieces about campus life.