Read my piece in Business Insider
I’m a father who uses some of my expendable income on my kids’ after-school activities.
I worry that giving my kids unlimited access to all these expensive activities will be unfair.
I’m now not using my entire expendable income to give my kids access.
Rye requires more precise temperature control than corn or barley when being passed through a still to produce a spirit to age into a well-liked whiskey.
Cook corn and barley a bit too hot, and there’s more room for error. Do the same with rye, and you end with a burnt mess.
I wrote about this for Men’s Journal here.
“It’s pretty well known that rye can be tricky to work with,” said Herman Mihalich, the chemical engineer turned founder of Dad’s Hat Rye, “and that ranges from small guys to even bigger guys.”
I got this story idea in my head back in March 2024 when I visited my friend’s small micro-distillery (pictured above), and he shared that without more precise temperature control tools he found rye more difficult than bourbon.
Pennsylvania was once the country’s largest producer of whiskey, and rye whiskey was its showcase.
I wrote about this history and the Pennsylvania rye renaissance for NPR affiliate WHYY and its Billy Penn news site. I am personally fascinated by this trend and its history. A couple years back, ahead of the American Whiskey Convention, I found an angle that made sense to be published on Generocity.org, the nonprofit industry news site my company publishes. This year as the convention returned, I felt like I’d be stretching our editorial focus to force another story. Instead I asked friend and Billy Penn editor Danya Henninger if she was interested. Thanks much to Danya for a thorough edit on what I delivered her. Turns out I’m a far more experienced business and economics reporter than I am culture.
I have written here about my relationship to alcohol, and specifically how I’ve come to most enjoy whiskey. Heck, I even have opinions about what cups should be used for what liquid. But this was something else: a chance to begin putting to work the years of my tracking an industry in change.
Do read the story. Here I thought I’d share a few stories I’ve had squirreled away and maintain a list of Pennsylvania whiskey distilleries (because I suspect this will keep growing and I don’t want to annoy Danya anymore with updates). Find both below.
Continue reading Here’s a list of Pennsylvania whiskey distilleries (and a few stories too)The research on low-cost, educational robotics led by Drexel University professor Pramod Abichandani was the focus of a profile I wrote for the college’s academic journal. It ran this summer.
We’ve written about him on Technical.ly here. My piece was a bit more focused on his research process. Find the full story online here.
As I do with my freelance writing, I have some extras that I cut from the story below.
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 a more general-interest focused story. I was also excited to get the piece out to a broader audience — thanks to editor Tom McGrath for the interest and the opportunity.
I suggest you buy a copy, but you can also see the story online.
As always, I share some of what didn’t make it into the story below.
Continue reading Mark Headd is your new Chief Data Officer: Philadelphia magazine
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, below I have some background and interview extras that I cut from the story.
Continue reading How the web continues to shape campus life: Temple Review
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, agile startups, taking an idea and bringing it to market. But as the speed of new technologies continues to quicken, the need for large businesses to help bring products to market becomes even greater. So big corporations are not only playing a remarkably underplayed role in innovation, they are also innovating in how they change the world altogether.
Give it a read and then check some of the extras from my interviews that didn’t make it into the piece.
Continue reading Temple Review: why big companies still lead innovation and how that’s changing
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.
Following the indicted former state Speaker of the House, whose corruption trial has been postponed until the fall, we covered what the impact the loss of a 30-year state leader would be on his district, particularly a small swath that had served as his political base.
Find all the coverage here.
I had the following roles:
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 grammar geeks because there just might be interest in hearing the thoughts of someone who told me: “I also love the semicolon, but that’s just my personal preference.”
Find what I submitted below.
Continue reading Rosemary Feal, Modern Language Association, Metro Q&A: Stories that never ran
