Collaborations & Editing
Lee builds and manages collaborative journalism projects and edits investigations. Selected works include:
Walmart’s annual revenues are larger than the GDP of Sweden; its founding family are prolific philanthropists. This seven-part series for Civil Eats took a detailed look at the poorly-understood nexus between the richest family in America, their philanthropy, and its staggering influence over the American food system.
Though practiced at flying under the radar, the heirs of Walmart founders Sam and Rob Walton are, as a group, richer than Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. With a commanding combined fortune of $224.5 billion, they preside over an expansive network of nonprofit businesses, family office funds, trusts, and smaller corporations, with annual philathropic contributions in excess of $1 billion.
The results have vast implications for the American food system, government, schools, the oceans, environment, and the press. And meanwhile Walmart, with 2.3 million employees worldwide and more than $600 billion in revenues, has grown so powerful that the company can retool the definition of good practice just by setting the lowest bar for it.
This series deftly follows the money and examines how the Walton’s would-be critics are also its bedfellows. Lee oversaw data collection, research, reporting, photography and fact-checking; coordinated pre-publication legal review and participated in fundraising. Walanthropy was nominated for a James Beard Award for investigative reporting.
INJURED AND INVISIBLE
This five-part series for Civil Eats reported on the often unprotected, unseen workers who labor inside the nation’s increasingly industrial animal agriculture industry. From meatpacking plants to dairy farms and chicken barns, the investigation dove deep into acute injuries and long-term illnesses afflicting workers in increasingly crowded facilities, and the corporate behavior that sometimes obscures those harms from public view. The series found that federal OSHA protections don’t apply to 96 percent of the animal agriculture operations that hire workers in America, thanks to a loophole intended to protect small farms, even though animal agriculture is some of the most dangerous work in America, ranking third among fatal injuries. When people die on the job, the series also found, OSHA doesn’t respond 85 percent of the time.
A project for Civil Eats that was partially reprinted by Gatopardo and Energy News Network, Injured & Invisible involved five reporters and one photographer, fact-checking in Spanish and English, and extensive pre-publication legal review. Lee oversaw data collection, reporting, photography and fact-checking; coordinated pre-publication legal review and the partnership with Gatopardo. Injured & Invisible won a James Beard Award for investigative reporting.
LINK TO FULL SERIES — 6 articles.
UNEQUAL JUSTICE
For more than 20 years, advocates and state-sponsored commissions decried disparities in Oregon’s criminal justice system but lacked the data to defend their claims. After more than a year of negotiations with the judicial department, Unequal Justice obtained access to 10 years of charging data from Oregon courts in 36 counties, and assembled the most comprehensive database detailing race-based outcomes in the Oregon criminal justice system to date — an analysis of 5 million charges. That data confirmed people of color were unfairly treated. Unequal Justice introduced the statistics that defined the problem, examined life inside those numbers, and explored the policies and practices that perpetuated them.
A joint project of independent journalist Kate Willson, NICAR, InvestigateWest, the Pamplin Media Group and criminologist Mark G. Harmon, Unequal Justice involved four reporters for print and podcast and three data editors. Lee oversaw grant writing, grant administration and partnerships, supervised contracts and reported several installments.
28 articles and podcasts.
PORTLAND HOUSING
Cash was king in Portland housing market, or so the story went in 2015. As buyers and renters faced new pressure for housing, blaming newcomers from California, this series analyzed cash transactions in the marketplace, discovering most cash was coming from investor speculation, including Wall Street landlords. A unique project that matched real estate sales data with tax records culled by a web crawler, Portland Housing linked whole neighborhoods to Wall Street shareholders, explored subsequent predatory practices, and linked state pension funds to investments befouling housing access.
A joint project of InvestigateWest and the Pamplin Media Group, Portland Housing involved two reporters for print. Lee oversaw FOIA work and data analysis, supervised contractors and reported all installments.
13 articles.
How cash sent the Portland home market spinning
26 investors who have way more house than you
Wall Street moves in on Portland rental homes
Articles
In the Flesh and Out Loud
Lee has appeared on numerous podcasts, television programs, live radio shows and at events. She is the narrator of the As The World Burns audiobook.