Staff Reporters

Mark Schapiro, Senior Correspondent
Schapiro has been an investigative journalist for more than two decades and has built an award-winning track record with a focus on environmental and international affairs. His work has appeared in Harper's, The Nation, Mother Jones, and The Atlantic Monthly. He's also been a correspondent on NOW with Bill Moyers, FRONTLINE/World, and Marketplace. His new book, Exposed, was published by Chelsea Green in September 2007.
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Michael Montgomery, Reporter
Michael Montgomery has been a correspondent and producer for American RadioWorks since 1999. A former foreign correspondent, Montgomery has reported on human rights, justice and security issues from Africa, Latin America, Europe and the United States. He's been reporting in the Balkans for more than 20 years. In addition to American RadioWorks, Montgomery’s radio stories and investigative reports have aired on NPR shows such as "All Things Considered," the CBC and the BBC. His print work on the Balkans has appeared in the Boston Review, Los Angeles Times and Time magazine. Montgomery is the recipient of the highest honors in U.S. broadcast journalism, including a DuPont-Columbia Gold Baton for "Massacre at Cuska."
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Andrew Becker, Reporter
Andrew covers the federal judiciary for CIR and is currently reporting on the immigration court system. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Nation Web site and Mother Jones. Before joining CIR in 2008, he was a fellow at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where he reported on human smuggling and corruption along the Southwest border for a joint New York Times and PBS FRONTLINE/World production. Previously he was a reporter for the Contra Costa Times. He has also written and reported for the Dallas Morning News, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, FRONTLINE, KQED California Report, and Los Angeles magazine. He received a master's degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.
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G.W. Schulz, Reporter
Schulz joined CIR in 2008 and covers homeland security. Prior to joining CIR, he wrote extensively about politics, municipal corruption, workplace safety, criminal justice and the changing national landscape in news media for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Urban Tulsa, a weekly newspaper in Oklahoma. He was an early contributor to the Chauncey Bailey Project, which won an IRE Tom Renner Award in 2008. In 2007, he won first place for investigative reporting from the California Newspaper Publishers Association and the Public Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California. Schulz graduated from the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.
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Chase Davis, Money and Politics Reporter
Chase is an investigative reporter focusing on money and politics for California Watch. Chase previously worked at the Des Moines Register, where he had written recently about how weak standards and deception hurt Iowa’s ability to monitor air pollution. Before that, Chase worked as an investigative reporter at the Houston Chronicle, where he uncovered waste and fraud within NASA and exposed glaring ethics issues within the nation’s third-largest county government. He is also a partner in the media-technology firm Hot Type Consulting, alongside Matt Waite, senior news technologist for the St. Petersburg Times. Chase is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism. E-mail: cdavis@californiawatch.org
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Christina Jewett, Health and Welfare Reporter
Christina is an investigative reporter focusing on health and welfare for California Watch. At ProPublica, she wrote about a chain of psychiatric hospitals plagued by substandard care and about the FDA’s failures to regulate medical-device safety. Her stories for ProPublica have appeared in the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. A native of Indiana, Christina previously worked at the Sacramento Bee. Her reporting on criminal justice has been honored with awards from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the National Commission on Crime and Delinquency. E-mail: cjewett@californiawatch.org
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Corey G. Johnson, Education Reporter (K–12)
Corey is an investigative reporter focusing on K-12 education for California Watch. He came from the Fayetteville Observer in North Carolina where he covered higher education and criminal justice issues. A native of Atlanta, Corey has exposed secrecy, mismanagement, corruption and abuse of power inside governmental, university and police organizations. He is a graduate of Florida A&M University. E-mail: cjohnson@californiawatch.org
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Erica Perez, Education Reporter (Higher Ed)
Erica is an investigative reporter focusing on higher education for California Watch. She came from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where she covered the University of Wisconsin system, the Wisconsin Technical College system and private colleges. A California native, Erica previously covered K-12 education for the Orange County Register. Before earning her master’s degree in journalism, she taught high school English for two years. Erica graduated from Stanford University and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication. E-mail: eperez@californiawatch.org
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Lance Williams, Money and Politics Reporter
Lance is an investigative reporter focusing on money and politics for California Watch. He previously worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he helped break many of the newspaper’s exclusive stories on the BALCO steroid scandal. With Mark Fainaru-Wada, he wrote Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds, BALCO and the Steroids Scandal that Rocked Professional Sports. In 2006, the reporting duo was held in contempt of court and threatened with 18 months in federal prison for refusing to testify about their confidential sources on BALCO. The subpoenas were later withdrawn. Lance has been a reporter in California for 34 years. He has won the George Polk Award, the Scripps Howard First Amendment Award and the Gerald Loeb Award, among other honors. He graduated from Brown University and the University of California-Berkeley. Before joining the Chronicle, he worked at the San Francisco Examiner, the Oakland Tribune and the Hayward Daily Review. E-mail: lwilliams@californiawatch.org
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Correspondents
Robert O Harrow Jr., CIR Senior Advisor
Robert O'Harrow is a reporter on the financial desk of the Washington Post, where he created a beat covering information technology, marketing and privacy. He worked as lead reporter for "No Place to Hide" under CIR sponsorship. O'Harrow was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for a series of Post articles in 2000 on privacy and technology. Before joining the Post in 1990, he reported for The Record (Bergen County, NJ) and The Times Herald-Record (Orange County, NY).
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Mimi Chakarova, Correspondent
Chakarova is a documentary photographer working on two long-term projects that examine the conflict in Kashmir and sex trafficking of women in Eastern Europe. She currently teaches photography at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and is the recipient of the 2003 Dorothea Lange Fellowship and the 2005 Magnum Photos Inge Morath Award. In 2007, she became the series curator of FRONTLINE/World's photography series, FlashPoint. In 2008, Chakarova's work on sex trafficking was awarded a People's Voice Webby. She was also a 2008 nominee for a News & Documentary Emmy Award. Chakarova's work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, CBS News 60 Minutes, PBS FRONTLINE/World and the Center for Investigative Reporting among others.
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Anna Badkhen, Correspondent
Anna Badkhen has covered wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and Kashmir. She has reported extensively from Iraq since 2003. Her book, "A War Reporter's Pantry," will be published in January 2011 by Free Press/Simon&Schuster. She lives in Massachusetts.
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