InvestigateWest Team

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Producing powerful journalism makes communities better. InvestigateWest is dedicated to enhancing democracy and community in the Pacific Northwest through journalism focused on the region’s environment, social justice and health, produced for the common good.

InvestigateWest makes a difference. Work produced by InvestigateWest journalists led in the passage of three laws by the Washington state Legislature. These laws, banning a toxic asphalt sealant, establishing an occupational cancer registry and controlling toxins in the workplace, make a difference in peoples' lives every day. We're proud of our achievements, and look forward to contributing even more to our community.

InvestigateWest is an independent group of journalists dedicated to enhancing democracy and community in the Pacific Northwest. Our work appears in a wide variety of media organizations, from the region's largest newspapers, to public televison and radio, ethnic media, commercial television and online news organizations.

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. This year, our work was nominated for a regional Emmy, and was honored with two first place staff awards and a third place by the Society of Professional Journalists.

Staff

Contributors

  • Lee van der Voo, Contributing Writer, Portland, OR
  • Paul Joseph Brown, Contributing Photojournalist, Seattle, WA
  • Mike Kane, Congributing Photojournalist, Seattle, WA

The Board*

  • Brant Houston, Knight Chair of Investigative Reporting at the University of Illinois
  • 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

Robert McClure, Executive Director

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, Executive Editor

Carol 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.

carol_smithweb

Jason Alcorn, Director, Community Engagement and Development

Jason Alcorn oversees fundraising, communication, and product development. He is a multimedia journalist with more than seven years of experience leading technology projects and online strategy with a list of clients that including Unicef, The Conservation Fund, eBay and Americas Quarterly. Mr. Alcorn is a graduate of Harvard College and received his master’s degrees from Columbia University’s School of International Affairs and Graduate School of Journalism, where he was recognized for outstanding performance in interactive design. He was a 2011 Carnegie-Knight News21 fellow.

Contributors

Lee van der Voo

Lee is a regular contributor to InvestigateWest, writing on issues including cruise ship pollution, sexual assault on college campuses and teen prostitution. She is based in Portland, Oregon, where she's reported on government, social issues and the environment for 10 years. 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.