I’m currently an investigative reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. Before that I wrote for a number of magazines. Some of my stories are linked below, and you can also view my archive on Longform.org.
Longer stories
Left in the Dirt
San Francisco Chronicle, November 2018; with Cynthia Dizikes
Working in a Wasteland
San Francisco Chronicle, July 2018; with Cynthia Dizikes
An Engineer’s Quest to Save Stephen Hawking’s Voice
San Francisco Chronicle, March 2018
Jerry and Marge Go Large
Huffington Post Highline, March 2018
What Bullets Do to Bodies
Huffington Post Highline, April 2017
Behind the Story: What Bullets Do to Bodies
By Elon Green, Columbia Journalism Review, May 2017
Notable Narrative: Jason Fagone and "What Bullets Do to Bodies"
By Davis Harper, Nieman Storyboard, June 2017
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week, April 28, 2017
The Sunday Long Read, April 30, 2017
The Gruesome November Night in one of Washington's Wealthiest Suburbs
Washingtonian, October 2016
Longform Best of 2016, Most Clicked
Urban Outfitters Bares All
Philadelphia magazine, August 2016
Meet the Ungers
Huffington Post Highline, May 2016
The Serial Swatter
The New York Times Magazine, November 29, 2015
The Texas Ranch Leading a Revolution in Pitching
ESPN The Magazine, September 14, 2015
Ladies and Gentlemen... Martha Graham Cracker!
Philadelphia, September 2014
How a Squad of Ex-Cops Fights Police Abuses
Mother Jones, August 2014
Grief in the Age of Paranoia
Philadelphia, July 2014
The Secret to Getting Top-Secret Secrets
Matter, June 2014
A Type House Divided
New York, June 2014
Dropped
Grantland, March 2014
Birdie Africa, The Lost Boy
Philadelphia, March 2014
The Willy Wonka of Pot
Grantland, October 2013
Patient No. 7
Philadelphia, August 2013
How Grandmaster Susan Polgar Became America's Top College Chess Coach
Wired, February 2013
Fergie Carey Would Like to Make a Wee Toast
Philadelphia, January 2013
How Nerf Became the World's Best Purveyor of Big Guns for Kids
Wired, September 2012
The Death (and Life) of the Philly Weekly and the Philly City Paper
Philadelphia, June 2012
How a Reddit Comment Became a Big-Budget Flick
Wired, April 2012
Schoolly D is Living the American Dream
Philadelphia, April 2012
Bigger than Jesus
Wired, August 2011
May the Best Nerd Win
Wired, December 2010
The Man Who Duped City Hall
Philadelphia, October 2010
Big Buck Hunter
Kill Screen, Spring 2010
The Dirtiest Player
GQ, February 2010
The Videogame Programmer Saving Our 21st-Century Souls
Esquire, December 2008
Searching for Richardson Dilworth
Philadelphia, December 2008
Jerry Blavat Finds the Fountain of Youth
Philadelphia, May 2008
Horsemen of the Esophagus
The Atlantic, May 2006
The Great Gusto of Jimmy Binns
Philadelphia, February 2006
Shorter stories
The Sloppy Hi-Fi of John Vanderslice
New Yorker, September 2014
The Construction of a Twitter Aesthetic
New Yorker, February 2014
Neil Freeman's Alternative Geography
New Yorker, March 2013
There's Gold in that Scrap
New York Times Magazine, August 2011