News
Who benefits from Supervisor grants? – June 21, 2014, inewsource
For this online and radio story about a controversial San Diego County Board of Supervisors grant program I acquired, cleaned, organized and analyzed 16 years worth of grants for five different county districts — about 4,000 grants in all. In the story I identified trends for all supervisors in grant recipients, as well as favored organizations for specific supervisors. This data was also set up as a searchable database for readers to look for their favorite nonprofits or local parks. I also wrote a followup to this story when the Board voted to double their available grant fund.
Opinion and editorial
ACTA has the same dangers as PIPA and SOPA, January 25, 2012, The Daily Aztec
For this column I took a look at the reasons and potential impacts of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, compared to recent acts that had been rejected following widespread public outcry. The column received a lot of attention, breaking several social media records for The Daily Aztec at the time. As of April 2014, it’s the third most read story on the website, with commenters from around the world.
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Arts & entertainment
How I feel about graduation, in 11 ‘The Princess Bride’ gifs, March 25, 2014, The Daily Aztec
This story, written in the style of popular websites such as Buzzfeed, quickly became the most read story in The Daily Aztec as of April 2014. The story went viral and in about a week it received more pageviews than The Daily Aztec has in an average month.
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Spanish
Immortal Technique muestra apoyo para activistas, Sept. 30, 2013, The Daily Aztec
For this story I interviewed political rapper Immortal Technique about student activism and the role of hip-hop music in social and political causes in the United States and Latin America. The interview was conducted in Spanish and published by The Daily Aztec‘s Spanish section, Mundo Azteca.
Leonardo Castaneda 