The future for the new City of Philadelphia Chief Data Officer Mark Headd and his role on this local government’s online transparency was the focus of my first contribution to Philadelphia magazine. I’ve followed Headd, the city’s transparency movements and the open government movement for years, so I was eager to pitch and report out [...]

More than 20 years after the Internet and web-based technologies stormed onto college campuses, the life of a university student is still rapidly changing. So goes the focus of another feature I did for the newly rebranded Temple University alumni magazine. Read the story here or see the sleek new design here [PDF]. As usual, [...]

How large technology companies still lead innovation in the world is the focus of a freelance story I wrote for Temple Review, the alumni magazine of Temple University. Read the story here or download the PDF here, on page 24. An earlier nut graf: Innovation has been seen as strictly in the purview of tiny, [...]

Though I took part in three of 14 JLab-funded Philadelphia Enterprise Reporting Fund projects, first announced here last fall, I led one of them. For Northeast Philadelphia hyperlocal NEast Philly, I helped lead the editorial direction of a project called District 172: the politics of change after state Rep. John Perzel. http://neastphilly.com/john-perzel/ Following the indicted [...]

A year ago, I did a short interview with Rosemary Feal, then the Executive Director of the Modern Language Association, ahead of the group’s annual conference in Philadelphia. The interview was due to run in the Metro but never did. With a year passed and its hook gone, I run it here for all you [...]

More than a year ago, I handled a half dozen interviews and a couple rewrites on a story for the Inquirer that covered what Philadelphia workplaces will look like in the future. As is sometimes the case, it never found its home in print. The story’s primary timeliness has been lost, but I think it [...]

As part of a push for a broader readership, back in March Technically Philly announced a content partnership with Philadelphia magazine and its new daily blog. Fellow co-founder Brian James Kirk has been writing most of the weekly posts, as he’s still freelancing. But last week, I filled in, penning a short feature on five [...]

A few times a month, I go out to civic and town watch meetings in a variety of neighborhoods. Yes, I actually find most of them to be fun — local politics on the smallest of scale. Since moving to Fishtown, I’ve begun going to monthly Fishtown Action and Fishtown Neighbors Meetings and filing reports [...]

A full-length travel story of mine focused on the five year anniversary of CouchSurfing.com at first destined for the Philadelphia Inquirer last January never found a home there. After a back and forth, I went another direction and it got a tad stale for the daily’s travel editor. So, because I’ve shared other stories that [...]

My first clip for the Fishtown Spirit ran in last Thursday’s issue, and my second ran yesterday. Keith Angelitis just started a fire in the front room of his Frankford Avenue studio. He has a jacket on and a ball cap pulled over his ruffled brown hair. Big front windows welcome the sunlight that pours [...]