Team

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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

  • Lee van der Voo, contributing writer, Portland
  • Paul Joseph Brown, photojournalist, Seattle, WA
  • Mike Kane, photojournalist, Seattle, WA

Student Interns

  • Katie Farden
  • Oliver Lazenby
  • Cassandra Little
  • Emily Holt

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.com 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 was one of 15 journalists selected for the Knight Digital Media Center’s inaugural boot camp in news entrepreneurship in 2009. 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.

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.

Contributors

Lee van der Voo

Lee  is a reporter based in Portland, Oregon, where she's reported on government, social issues and the environment for 10 years. Her work for Reuters has appeared in online versions of CNN, USA Today, the Chicago Times, Boston Globe and New York Times. In addition to winning numerous regional awards as a newspaper reporter, Lee won a national prize from the Society of Environmental Journalists in 2006, and that same year, was also a finalist for Oregon's top reporting prize, the Bruce Baer Award. She won an IRE award in 2010 for her role in reporting on an alleged rape involving an Oregon police lieutenant.

Paul Joseph Brown

Paul 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.

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. 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 Interns

Katie Farden is a senior Women’s Studies major at Seattle University. She serves as News Editor for her university’s student newspaper, The Spectator. Over the past two years,Katie has covered Capitol Hill neighborhood events, local politics, and Seattle University news. In summer of 2009, Katie interned for Ms. Magazine. Though she is a Pacific Northwest native, Katie enjoys international travel—She recently spent three months teaching and conducting interviews for an oral history project at a vocational high school in Belize City. Katie hopes to enter the field of advocacy journalism upon completing her bachelor’s degree.

Oliver Lazenby is finishing his senior year at Western Washington University. He spent his first few years at Western studying such varied topics as environmental science, English and history. After editing and writing for The Planet, Western’s environmental magazine, Oliver decided to major in environmental journalism. Because he enjoys learning about the world around him and telling stories, it has been a good fit. When he isn’t studying, Oliver likes to read, hike, bicycle and skateboard. After graduation, he plans to pursue a career in journalism or environmental communication.

Emily Holt is a senior at Seattle University. An English Literature and Philosophy double major, she is also an editor and writer for the Spectator. She has also reported for the Puget Sound Business Journal and has regularly written on youth violence and homelessness. She volunteers at the Bailey-Gatzert elementary school, and was named a 2010 Seattle University Family Homelessness Scholar.

Cassandra Little is a senior at Seattle University double-majoring in strategic communications and public affairs. She has held numerous leadership positions at Seattle U, including president of the Public Relations Student Society of America chapter and member of the Student Executive Council. She has volunteered for several homelessness organizations and is spending her spring break doing service work in Belize. She was named a 2010 Seattle University Family Homelessness Scholar.