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 [...]

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 [...]

Nobody in business will ever say he isn’t concerned with listening to the customer. Really proving it, of course, is the difference between well-loved companies and those that aren’t. Even notoriously frustrating Comcast has gained ground with its use of social media — a powerful mechanism for communication that, despite all the attention, we still [...]

Go look at the online multimedia presentation on Philly.com celebrating the 180th anniversary of the Philadelphia Inquirer. If your interest in newspapers or Philadelphia or freelancing or new media or designing or anything else. Go there. Packaged with a keepsake insert in yesterday’s Sunday print edition, it shows depth and breadth, intellectual and historical stimulation [...]

Why an influx of dogs are often a sign of a neighborhood in change is the focus of my story for the Style & Soul section of today’s Inquirer. Dogs may not have caused Northern Liberties to change from blighted to trendy, but they sure were a sign that change was coming. Twenty years ago, [...]

Sometimes it’s the stories you don’t quite expect to, that get one of the warmest responses. I posted two weeks ago about a story on the secret lives of ballerinas I wrote for the Inquirer. It came on the same day as my Philadelphia Weekly cover story on suburban rapper Asher Roth. While the Roth [...]

I cover the secret passions of a handful of Pennsylvania Ballet dancers in a story for the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday. It was last summer when Brooke Moore figured she and her father had probably scared away a mountain lion. The deer they discovered was freshly killed, its leg just torn off; there were no bugs [...]

The Devon Theater‘s proud reopening on Frankford Avenue in Mayfair was detailed in yesterday’s Sunday Inquirer by theatre critic Howie Shapiro and me. About 400 people, dressed for a gala, will take their seats Friday evening in what once was a dilapidated Frankford Avenue movie house. Three women in nun’s habits will pop up, administering [...]

Devon artistic director Michael Pickering oversees a rehearsal of “Nunsense,” the inaugural show for the new theater. AMANDA CEGIELSKI / Staff Photographer By Howie Shapiro and Christopher Wink | Philadelphia Inquirer | March 22, 2009 About 400 people, dressed for a gala, will take their seats Friday evening in what once was a dilapidated Frankford [...]

Devon artistic director Michael Pickering oversees a rehearsal of “Nunsense,” the inaugural show for the new theater. AMANDA CEGIELSKI / Staff Photographer By Howie Shapiro and Christopher Wink | Philadelphia Inquirer | March 22, 2009 About 400 people, dressed for a gala, will take their seats Friday evening in what once was a dilapidated Frankford [...]