Opening Day in Oakland, With Prospects of Doubleheader of Anguish for A’s Fans: New York Times, April 6, 2012

Opening Day in Oakland, With Prospects of Doubleheader of Anguish for A’s Fans As the A’s take the field for their home opener Friday against the Seattle Mariners, the team’s overachieving glory days depicted in last year’s “Moneyball” starring Brad Pitt as General Manager Billy Beane are a warm, if distant glimmer. While Opening Day […]

From Bowling to Bars: Urban Baseball Parks Boost Business: CNBC.com, April 2, 2012

From Bowling to Bars: Urban Baseball Parks Boost Business Twenty years ago, the Baltimore Orioles did something that at the time ran counter to every trend in stadium construction: They built their new ballpark right in the heart of downtown Baltimore. That not only proved beneficial to the Orioles, who continue to draw crowds to […]

Merger With Investigative Unit Likely to Mean Major Shift in Bay Citizen Coverage: New York Times, March 29, 2012

Once a media reporter, always a media reporter. Although I had not written my media column in the San Francisco Chronicle for several years (I left the paper in 2007, but Media Bytes had ended well before that), The Bay Citizen assigned me the story of their own merger; because of  an arrangement they had […]

With long-term consequences, community college students struggle to pass college-level math classes: EdSource Extra, Feb. 7, 2012

In a new journalistic experiment, I wrote a story for the educational nonprofit EdSource to accompany a report on how students at community colleges are having trouble passing their math classes. With long-term consequences, community college students struggle to pass college-level math classes Large numbers of community college students are struggling to pass the college-level […]

Pig Farmer’s True Prizewinner is His Fantasy Baseball Team: New York Times, October 2011

I broke this story at the end of the 2011 baseball season, when the best fantasy baseball player in the world – with winnings of more than $300,000 over the past three years – was revealed to be Idaho pig farmer Lindy Hinkelman. Modest Farmer, Managing Mogul The National Fantasy Baseball Championship, a contest paying […]