UN Peacekeepers patrol the streets of Port-au-Prince in March 2011. Photo by Joshua Kagi
Now accepting freelance assignments and op-eds on civic life, faith, and public impact — reach out to collaborate.
Journalism, for me, is not content. It is a public trust.
I was trained in newsrooms and on legislative floors, but my deepest education came from small towns, church basements, and neighborhood meetings—places where people rarely get quoted, and almost never get seen. Journalism at its best gives those places the dignity of attention. It slows down. It asks better questions. It stays long enough to understand what a decision actually costs.
I write in the space between disillusionment and hope: clear-eyed about what’s broken, stubbornly committed to what can still be rebuilt. Journalism should name harm without numbing us, and surface possibility without slipping into propaganda. It should be rigorous, fair, and relentlessly human.
Writer&still we build is where my journalism, civic work, and strategy practice meet. It is a Substack publication for people who are still trying to build something good inside institutions that have disappointed them. The newsletter follows the same thread that runs through my production and my consulting work: complex systems deserve clear, honest stories—and the people inside them deserve to be seen, not reduced to headlines.
I write from the space between disillusionment and hope, tracing how policy, faith, parenting, and local governance show up in real neighborhoods and real families. Some pieces are reported essays on housing, public life, or church reform. Others are slower reflections from the inside of leadership roles—field notes on what it costs to keep showing up when it would be easier to walk away.
The aim is the same as in my documentaries and consulting: to make the complex feel clear, and the grand feel possible. To name what is breaking people down without numbing us, and to point toward the quiet work of repair that rarely makes the news.
If you’re a weary builder, quiet reformer, or hopeful cynic who still cares about institutions, &still we build is an ongoing invitation to stay, to tell the truth, and to keep building anyway.
DocumentarianAs a documentarian, I’m drawn to stories where private lives collide with public questions. As Senior Producer of the PBS series Grown Up Dad, I explore how modern fatherhood is being rebuilt in real families and real communities. With projects like What Did You Drag Me Into: The Flamy Grant Story and The Gentleman of the Senate: Oregon’s Mark Hatfield, my work has ranged from queer artists challenging the boundaries of Christian music to statesmen wrestling with power, conscience, and legacy. Across each film, the through line is the same: careful, character‑driven storytelling that honors complexity, invites empathy, and asks what kind of world we are building together.
PhotographerAs a photographer, I work the same way I do as a reporter: start with the wider story, then look for the human center. With a background in journalism, I’m drawn to images that place people in context—on the street, in the stands, at the mic, in the field—so you feel not just the subject, but the atmosphere around them. From sports and breaking news to portraits, products, and events, my goal is to make photographs that carry narrative weight: moments that help your community, campaign, or organization see itself more clearly.