I’m a Master of Public Policy Candidate (expected graduation 2011) at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Prior to that, I was a professional journalist and editor. I have a particular interest in media and technology and in intellectual property issues as they relate to creativity and innovation. I am very fortunate to have as my advisor Prof. James Hamilton, author of All the News That’s Fit to Sell. Prof. Hamilton is director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media and Democracy at Duke.
This summer, I am working with the New America Foundation’s Media Policy Initiative, a Knight Foundation-funded project that emerged from the Knight Commission Report, “Informing Communities: Sustaining Democracy in the Digital Age.” In summer 2010, I am working on a media ecology study of the Triangle area of North Carolina.
For the Independent, the alternative weekly newspaper serving the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, I wrote about a wide variety of local issues. I’ve covered city council meetings, bills before the state legislature, art exhibits, anti-war protests, gay rights issues and the local music scene, among many other things. (See my archives page for links to these stories.) My occasional column, The Monitor, explored issues of media and technology in a local and regional perspective.
Before I started at the Independent in January 2003, I worked in the books editorial department of Duke University Press. Prior to moving to Durham in July 2001, I worked for three and a half years at Salon.com in San Francisco, where I was an associate editor in the news department. I am a graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle.
My husband, Barry Varela, is a writer and researcher at the Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society at Duke University and the author of books for young readers. I have a two-year-old son and two stepdaughters, ages 13 and 15.
