Writing

This co-op project involving Solutions Journalism Network, High Country News magazine and a dozen Montana news outlets looked at how western Montana's rural communities are responding as economic trends pull jobs and people toward urban centers. As SJN's Montana-based team member, I helped coordinate engagement work, developed social media graphics and reported out pieces focused on tourism-driven renewal and rural migration trends.

A recurring feature series reported and published over 18 months, exploring the consequences of population growth in and around Bozeman, Montana, one of the fastest-growing micropolitan regions in the nation. Stories blended data reporting, narrative storytelling and a solutions focus, driving conversations on topics including tax policy, ag conservation, and gentrification.

It turns out that Montana's top-ranked high school — just north of Yellowstone National Park in Gardiner — actually has declining enrollment. Trying to understand how Greater Yellowstone's small towns are faring as the region's scenery economy booms, I headed there to check things out.

A reported feature framed by personal narrative, exploring economic and cultural change in Montana's fastest-growing city.

The cautionary tale of how one of Montana's two hip college towns, Bozeman, put years into an affordable housing program with little to show for it — published as the state's other one, Missoula, geared up for a push informed by the same consultant.

An in-depth look at how a signature Bozeman planning effort flopped — helping cost the city's top administrator his longtime job.

Twenty years after Bozeman officials approved a high-end neighborhood adjacent to the the municipal landfill, the city found itself facing a wave of lawsuits over subsurface fumes seeping from the by-then-decommissioned facility. As the lawyers worked their way toward what eventually became a multi-million-dollar settlement, I dug into the project's public record to sort out what exactly happened as city officials reviewed the development.

Don Frye made running a pair of legendary dive bars a family affair for decades. When he died in 2016, I landed the honor of writing feature obit for him.

Bozeman's college-town police blotter is an institution unto itself, but even by its standards the subject of this profile had an unusual run of encounters with law enforcement. I tracked him down for the back story. His version of it, at least.

Faced with a slow news week, I called nearly every bar in town to ask how much they were charging for a pint of my favorite microbrew and then used the data to compile a beer price listing. I repeated the effort a year later - allowing the creation of the city's first-ever beer inflation index.