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I started at Pittsburgh City Paper in January 2022 — Mayor Ed Gainey’s inauguration was my first assignment — and as my first year here ends, I made a list of some of my most unique stories, stories that City Paper told first or distinctively.
North Side family alleges transphobic harassment from neighbor // May 27, 2022
We were the first outlet to cover this North Side family’s legal battle with their neighbor. It was a privilege to sit and talk with them at various stages of the difficult process. You can read my series on what happened in our LGBTQ section.
Downtown Pittsburgh celebrates Chinatown’s official recognition as historic landmark // April 13, 2022
When I began researching Pittsburgh’s historic Chinatown in preparation for this story on their official designation, I was immediately struck by the fact that most media coverage of Chinatown included more or less the same set of facts and quoted the same one or two sources. I was so pleased to get to talk to Shirley Yee, the daughter of the late Yuen Yee, the informal mayor of Pittsburgh’s Chinatown, about her family’s history and add something new to the surviving historical record.
CP Jail Watch: Do vendor contracts incentivize poor food service? // Oct. 27, 2022
As complaints of inedible and unsanitary food at the Allegheny County Jail continue to surface, I spent a long time researching this story about the structure of food service contracts at Allegheny County Jail. This story includes just a fraction of that research but offers a compelling possible explanation for the alleged poor quality of food at the county jail over the last few years. The contracts in question have now expired. At this month’s meeting of the Jail Oversight Board, jail administration reported the execution of a contract with a new commissary vendor, Oasis Commissary Service, which, they say, will not be the same as their new, as-yet-unannounced food vendor.
Giant Eagle consumer info could be used to target pregnant shoppers. // Aug. 9, 2022
Although the underlying investigation into the sale of pregnancy data isn’t ours, we were the only Pittsburgh media to consider the implications of the discovery that Giant Eagle is the likely source of digital data on pregnant or potentially pregnant shoppers for sale on the open market.
Volunteers race against the seasons to catch dumped guinea pig // Aug. 22, 2022
This cute story came from a post on the r/pittsburgh subreddit, and I was inspired by the dedication of the volunteer guinea pig rescuers.
Honorable mention
My memorial essay on the sex appeal of one of television’s most compelling Jewish mothers (and former Tarentum resident), Estelle Harris. Thank you to our art director Lucy Chen for the lovely illustration.
This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2022.
