February 2008. CQ Researcher published its "At Issue" feature on whether street gangs were a growing national problem. The "yes" position was argued by Robert S. Mueller III, then Director of the FBI. The "no" position was argued by Justice Policy Institute, where I served as Communications Director. I wrote what JPI said.
CQ Researcher is one of the most cited policy publications in the country. Librarians and journalism schools treat it as reference material. The "At Issue" feature is the marquee element of every report. Editors choose exactly one credible voice from each side of a contested policy question. They put a 20-person criminal justice reform nonprofit opposite the federal government.
That kind of placement does not happen because of a single pitch. It happens because the field already knows who you are. JPI ended up in that pairing because I had spent the previous year building the kind of communications operation that earned the field's trust.
The roleThree kinds of writing happening at once
JPI was a research and advocacy organization working on mass incarceration, juvenile justice, and the policies that drive both. My job was earned media. In practice that meant three different kinds of writing operating in parallel:
Surrogate writing for JPI leadership and allied juvenile justice advocates. Op-eds, statements, policy contributions. Drafted in their voice, reviewed by them, placed under their byline. The CQ Researcher piece is the marquee example.
Original policy reporting under my own byline. JPI published its own coverage of the field. I reported on major research, interviewed principal investigators and foundation directors, and translated dense findings into pieces practitioners actually used.
Major report rollouts. Anchoring press strategy for JPI's own research releases. Press materials, message development, executive prep, sustained relationships with reporters who covered the beat.
Three skills, one role. Each fed the others. Original reporting built credibility that made pitch calls land. Relationships built through rollouts created openings for placements. Placements like CQ Researcher signaled to the field that JPI was a voice worth quoting in the future.
The marquee placementWriting the other side of a national debate
The CQ Researcher question was: Do street gangs represent a growing national problem? Mueller argued yes, citing the doubled FBI caseload, the National Gang Intelligence Center, MS-13 operations across Central America, and 2,200 gang convictions in the prior year. It was a strong "yes" position, made stronger by the institutional weight behind it.
The JPI side could not match the institutional weight. So it had to do something else. It had to reframe the question.
The argument I built led with the data point most readers had not heard: nationwide gang membership was at its lowest level in three decades. Then the diagnosis: the perceived crisis was being fueled by media sensationalism and the misuse of law-enforcement statistics. Then the demographic counter-evidence: most gang members were not youth of color, most aged out within a year, gang members played a relatively small role in the broader crime problem. Then the racial equity critique: the costs of failed suppression strategies were falling disproportionately on African-American and Latino communities while white gang members rarely showed up in enforcement accounts. Then the constructive close: evidence-based alternatives that promoted jobs, education, and reentry.
Structured to be cited, not just read.
"Violent gangs are a nationwide plague that is no longer limited to our largest cities. Since 2001, our violent gang caseload has more than doubled."
"Nationwide gang membership is at its lowest level in three decades, and there is no evidence that gang activity is growing. The myth of a growing gang menace is primarily fueled by media sensationalism and the misuse of law-enforcement gang statistics."
Across the national pressThe CQ Researcher placement wasn't a one-off
The CQ Researcher piece was the marquee, but it sat on top of a steady, year-after-year body of placements I shepherded for JPI research and JPI's allied advocates. The work landed in roughly every outlet a national criminal justice reform nonprofit could want to land in.
The KIDSCOUNT campaign is worth pulling out. In a single year I wrote and placed seven op-eds in major state papers, anchored to that year's KIDSCOUNT juvenile justice data release, under the bylines of state-level reform advocates in Florida, Mississippi, Texas, and Georgia. Seven placements in one year, in major papers, for principals who would not otherwise have had access to those op-ed pages on their own.
Original reporting under my bylineThe work that built the credibility
JPI also published its own original coverage of the juvenile and criminal justice reform field. I wrote those pieces, sourcing from principal investigators, foundation directors, and national reform leaders. The writing was reporting, not advocacy. Multi-sourced, no anonymous attribution, each voice providing a different angle on the question.
Two representative examples:
Coverage of the MacArthur Foundation's Pathways to Desistance study, the largest research effort to date examining outcomes for serious juvenile offenders. The piece interviewed the study's principal investigator at the University of Pittsburgh, the MacArthur Foundation's Director of Juvenile Justice, the director of the National Juvenile Justice Network, and the co-director of the National Youth Screening and Assessment Project. Translated the research finding (institutional placement showed no advantage over community-based alternatives, even for serious offenses) into terms practitioners and policymakers could act on.
A profile of the Juvenile Indigent Defense Action Network (JIDAN), MacArthur Foundation's first nationally recognized initiative focused solely on juvenile indigent defense. Sourced from the executive director of the National Juvenile Defender Center and JIDAN team members in Florida, California, and Massachusetts. Made an access-to-counsel reform initiative readable by leading with the principle (constitutional due process rights for children under In re Gault) and ending with the practical innovations underway in each participating state.
Anchoring research momentsPress strategy for major JPI reports
The third part of the role was anchoring press strategy for JPI's own research releases. A representative example: the rollout of Healing Invisible Wounds: Why Investing in Trauma-Informed Care for Children Makes Sense, a JPI brief examining the relationship between childhood trauma and justice system involvement.
The release led with the headline finding (between 75 and 93 percent of incarcerated youth had experienced at least one traumatic event), supported with voices from the brief's physician author and JPI's executive director, and closed with seven concrete policy recommendations giving reporters specific quotable takeaways. The byline of the press contact at the bottom was mine.
The strategic layerInitiatives I originated, not just executed
The earned media work was the visible output. The strategic origination was what made it sustainable. A senior communications role at a small policy nonprofit means proposing the moves, not just executing the ones that come down from the executive director. Three examples from my JPI years:
-
The Maryland life-sentence documentary, funded by the Open Society Institute
For years, JPI had been supporting Maryland advocates pushing legislation to remove the Governor from the parole process for people serving life sentences with the possibility of parole. The traditional advocacy tools were not moving the needle — no one had been released under the existing framework in four gubernatorial administrations. I proposed JPI support the development of a short documentary film showing the human cost of the policy. The proposal was funded by the Open Society Institute. It expanded JPI's role and funding for related work in Maryland and gave legislators a window into communities the policy had affected.
-
The de-incarceration fact sheet that reframed a budget story
In 2010, as states began considering prison population reductions as a budget measure, legislators were struggling to defend the move publicly. I proposed JPI release a fact sheet specifically built to give policymakers reframing language, and I drafted the first version. Once finalized and released, the fact sheet produced numerous national media hits and helped shift the public framing of de-incarceration from a fiscal admission into a public-safety strategy.
-
The MacArthur Foundation crisis communications primer
When a youth was killed during riots in Illinois, the MacArthur Foundation asked me to produce a crisis communications primer for its Models for Change reform grantees. I drafted and delivered the primer on a tight deadline. It was distributed to grantees in four states and three reform networks, helping them reframe the incident in ways that kept their reform efforts on track in a moment when reform momentum was at risk.
What's in the artifactsRead the work directly
Twenty years laterThe work still holds up
The writing is from 2008 to 2010. The CQ Researcher placement, the bylined reporting, the press release. Reading it now, the arguments still land. The structure is still sound. The sources are still credible. The trauma-informed care movement that the Healing Invisible Wounds release helped seed is now standard practice in many child-serving systems. The MacArthur Foundation research I covered shaped a generation of juvenile justice reform.
That is the truest measure of earned media work. Not the placement count or the impression numbers. Whether the writing was strong enough to outlast the news cycle.