Team

InvestigateWest is an accomplished group of journalists. Our staffers have won or been finalists for every significant national journalism award for investigative and narrative work, including the Pulitzer Prize, White House Correspondents Association Edgar A. Poe Award, the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, Best of the West and the PEN literary award.

Staff

Contributors

  • Paul Joseph Brown, photojournalist, Seattle, WA
  • Mike Kane, photojournalist, Seattle, WA

Student Intern

  • Jennifer Privette

The Board*

  • Frank Allen, president and executive director of the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources in Missoula
  • Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian
  • Rita Hibbard, executive director and editor, InvestigateWest
  • Brant Houston, Knight Chair of Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois
  • Sue Ellen McCann, Executive Producer, KQED
  • Beth Parke, executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Philadelphia
  • Vikki Porter, Director, Knight Digital Media Center
  • Brian Reich, managing director of little m media in New York
  • Jennifer Sizemore, vice president and editor-in-chief of MSNBC in Seattle

The Advisory Board*

  • Frank Clifford, author/former environment editor, Los Angeles Times
  • Steve Doig, Knight Chair in Journalism, Arizona State University
  • Gene Duvernoy, President, Cascade Land Conservancy
  • David McCumber, Editor, The Advocate of Stamford and the Greenwich Time, Editorial Director, Hearst Connecticut Newspaper Group
  • Eric Nalder, Senior Enterprise Reporter, Hearst Newspapers
  • Mark Trahant, Kaiser Media Fellow
  • Duff Wilson, Investigative Reporter, The New York Times

* All titles for identification purposes only.

Staff Biographies

Rita Hibbard, Executive Director and Editor

rita_hibbardweb

Rita led the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s newsroom and directly supervised its investigative team, propelling the P-I to national recognition while changing the staff focus from dead-tree to Web-first. As the P-I’s assistant managing editor for news, she led investigations that won numerous prizes including the 2009 Polk Award for Military Reporting, the 2009 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the 2008 Edgar A. Poe Award given by the White House Correspondents’ Association. Under her leadership, investigative reporters covered issues as diverse as corrupt cops, Boy Scouts with a zeal for clear-cutting their heritage lands and government officials whose cronyism cost military families housing and taxpayers millions of dollars. She currently is enrolled in Seattle University’s Masters Program in Nonprofit Leadership, and was one of 15 journalists selected for the Knight Digital Media Center’s inaugural boot camp in news entrepreneurship. While many people climb Washington’s tallest mountain, Rita bicycled the 150 miles around Mount Rainier in one day—at the same time conquering 10,000 feet of elevation gain.

Daniel Lathrop, Chief Digital Strategist, Investigative Journalist

lathropDaniel is one of the nation’s leading practitioners of Computer Assisted Reporting, the application of data analysis and computer technology to journalism. As a member of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s investigative projects team, he contributed to numerous award-winning projects. He won the Edgar A. Poe Award from the White House Correspondents Association; the 2009 Award in Criminal Justice Reporting from John Jay College of Criminal Justice; and a 2007 finalist certificate from Investigative Reporters and Editors, in addition to several regional awards. Prior to that, as database editor at the Center for Public Integrity, he ran one of the largest CAR teams in journalism, garnering several national awards. He lives in Seattle with his wife Anne-Marie Taylor Lathrop and their two Maine coon cats.

Robert McClure, Chief Environmental Correspondent

robert_mcclurewebRobert’s midlife crisis was all about environmental reporting. After an academic year on the prestigious Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship, the Pulitzer Prize finalist realized that he needed to move West if he wanted to cover the really big environmental stories. So he left his native Florida, spending his 40th birthday – his second weekend as a Westerner – camping amid the snow on Washington’s Mount Adams. During his two decades on the environment beat, Robert prodded officials until they launched major ecosystem restoration projects in Puget Sound and the Florida Everglades. The latter remains the largest ecosystem restoration attempted on the planet so far. At the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he was the backbone of five major projects, including one that uncovered a glaring loophole in the Endangered Species Act. McClure, a board member at the Society of Environmental Journalists, has won a number of awards, including the John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Journalism.

Carol Smith, Health and Social Justice

carol_smithwebCarol is considered one of the best narrative writers in the country. While an enterprise reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, she covered a variety of beats, including science and medicine, the working poor, returning veterans, and most recently, mental illness and society. She is known for combining a compelling storytelling approach with watchdog reporting. Her work was a 2006 finalist for the PEN Literary awards, and was also included in “The Best Creative Nonfiction,” published in 2007 by W. W. Norton & Company. Carol has been a co-finalist for Harvard University’s Goldsmith Prize in Investigative Journalism. Her 2008 story on Washington state’s broken mental health system won a 2009 Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. When she isn’t busy with journalism, Carol loves to dance and teach Argentine tango.

Kristen Millares Young, Investigative Reporter

kristen_youngwebKristen first learned she wanted to be a journalist while living in Cuba, where she investigated sex tourism and its impact on Havana’s economy and society. After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 2003, Kristen worked for TIME Magazine, the Buenos Aires Herald and The Miami Herald before landing at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. As a business and metro reporter, Kristen uncovered Port of Seattle waste and corruption that cost taxpayers millions of dollars, exposing cronyism that became the focus of an ongoing federal criminal investigation. She also works in radio with KUOW, a Seattle-based National Public Radio member station. When she’s not muckraking, Kristen hikes, climbs, bikes, dances and works on her novel.

Anne-Marie Taylor, Development Director

Anne-Marie is a fundraiser and grassroots organizer with extensive professional online, political and media relations experience. An early and successful adopter of online tools for fundraising and organizing, she has been involved in the cutting edge of online political activity utilizing Web 2.0 APIs and successful e-mail and social media fundraising campaigns. She has also developed strategic plans for soliciting investments from venture capitalists and individual investors and was an early team member at Chicago-based Eolas Technologies. In 2004 she worked on the advance team of one of the major party vice presidential candidates. Also an avid photographer, in 2008 she was a credentialed press photographer at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. She was previously a senior consultant at ConklinScott, a national fundraising firm with political and non-profit clients. She earned a J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law and passed the bar in Illinois.

Contributors

Paul Joseph Brown

Paul Joseph Brown had just finished his degree in economics and politics at the University of Toronto and was headed for a career in law and the Foreign Service when his parents gave him a camera for his graduation. That gift launched a 25-year. award-winning career in photojournalism. Before joining the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, he worked for a series of highly regarded newspapers in Ohio, Maine, Oregon, Alaska and Texas. He has worked on assignment in 15 countries, on five continents. He’s covered wars, revolutions and elections, hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. He’s photographed kings and queens, rocks stars, and Bill Gates. He’s won some of the highest national and international awards for photojournalism, and his eloquent documentation of  some of the most devastating industrial damage in the region has had gallery showings.

Mike Kane

MikeKane_mugMike is a Seattle-based photographer specializing in documentary, editorial and adventure/outdoors photojournalism and multimedia. He has been a staff photographer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and via the Hearst Newspapers Journalism Fellowship the San Antonio Express-News and the San Francisco Chronicle. His work includes coverage of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, drug cartel violence and prostitution along the U.S./Mexico border, street gangs, bike messengers, Latino immigration and, for the New York Times, the San Juan de Sabinas mine disaster in Coahuila, Mexico. His outdoor adventure photography has included coverage of summit climbs on Mount Rainier and other peaks. He studied at the University of Texas in Austin and completed a master’s photo project on armed civilian border militias operating on the Arizona/Mexico border. His fluency in Spanish has enabled him to deepen his coverage of many of the communities involved in these stories.

Student Intern

Jennifer Privette

JenniferJennifer is a Seattle University senior.  A former intern for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Jennifer has always had a passion and talent for crafting the written word.  Still, she didn’t always know that she wanted to be a journalist. She explored fashion and psychology, and even spent a summer cooking on a fish processor in Alaska’s Aleutian Chain, before she finally listened to her professors and switched majors.  When she isn’t entrenched in homework, she spends her time cooking, delving into anything creative, and traveling the great Northwest.