The rumors are true: The Stranger has hired Claudia Rowe to run our news department. Rowe wrote an assessment of the mayor's handling of youth violence for The Stranger earlier this month, and has been writing about youth, race, and social justice for nearly 20 years, most recently at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In 2008, her portrayal of a south Seattle family shattered by their teenage son's accidental shooting of his stepbrother won a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and helped save a 16-year-old from going to state prison. Last spring, Harvard University honored Claudia for her revealing reporting on the allure of gangsâfor instance, this piece of reporting for the P-I about gangs in Seattle: how they work, how they're organized geographically, why teenagers join them, what they get out of them, what the city is doing about it. And she has been contributing to the New York Times, reporting on everything from school budgets to environmental science, since 1997.
As news editor, Claudia will be managing The Stranger's coverage of local politics, crime, drug reform, transportation, and the environment. And she'll be on Slog every day. We are thrilled to have her. She starts October 1.
UPDATE: Here.
