The “Lone Voter” is a story of a 2015 special taxing district election gone wrong, which I uncovered and am still following today. The story was picked up nationwide, and I was even interviewed for a five-minute sketch on The Daily Show. Some have called it an example of gerrymandering gone awry, while others have said it shows the power of one vote. The initial story may be downloaded below. 

The Lone Voter and CID continue to battle in the Missouri Supreme Court. Her cause is now the example in the state of a widespread problem of trial judge abuse of power. Click here to read that story.

This story came about in response to rumors that a city council candidate – a bar owner in town – had been offering underage Greek college students free alcohol to register to vote and then vote for him.

Our open records law does not allow the release of voter registration data with birthdates. However, that information is available in Missouri on the county clerk websites. Using a computer program, I pulled the birth dates from the online database and paired them with a spreadsheet containing the names and addresses of all voters in a particular city ward who registered to vote during a set period of time. I used a similar method to check those names against the University of Missouri student directory, and the same for the university's sorority and fraternity rosters. Below is a link to the data-based story about how many of those college students registered. Following this story was one confirming rumors.

A budget-related story which was done in an unusual format to make it more accessible to the average reader. Immediately following the release of the city of Columbia's 2018 budget, I picked out the highlights and presented them in a top-ten list with explanations. Additionally, I made an infographic to accompany the story.

After hearing complaints about Missouri officials' inadequate responses to open records requests, I conducted a FOI audit on the 18 government agencies I interacted with the most. My coworkers joined with audits of their own. The main story produced from that project can be downloaded below. The audit resulted in extensive changes throughout mid-Missouri to how records requests are handled, including adoption of a city transparency policy, a new training regimen for records custodians and the purchase of software that makes it easier to keep track of requests.

This story required a bit of everything: gaining the trust of sources who did not want to talk about this execution; digging long-forgotten documents and court files out of the state libraries; poring over reels of microfilm. 

An example of breaking news coverage. Former Republican Gov. Eric Greitens announced vague budget cuts, and during the next few hours I worked with two editors to piece together a story about how those cuts would affect mid-Missouri. I updated the story twice throughout the afternoon. The first time I included comments from legislators I called. The second time I added information that took about an hour to compile – I was able to accurately match points made in Greitens' announcement with parts of a former appropriations bill. 

An example of a story that came from spot news coverage.​