I love a good news feature — an interesting story based off the news, but not quite news itself. It’s what Barry Newman, The Wall Street Journal’s “King of the A-Hed” (their standing quirky page one news feature) might call “News To Me.”

Below is a link to some of my favorite news features that I’ve written over the years, along with a little bit about the back story behind each one. Enjoy!

Business Insider:

• “The young lawyer who became the ‘Don Quixote’ of canceling student debt.” This story profiled the work of a lawyer who’s successfully debunking the myth that student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. It was my first in-depth profile in a while, which I used as a window into the legal tussles upending the student loan market.

The Wall Street Journal:

• “How a Japanese Rice Farmer Got Tangled Up in the Hertz Bankruptcy.” This newsfeature traced the flow of global capital that had underpinned the lending boom to America’s riskiest corporate borrowers — until the COVID-19 pandemic upended the market. From The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 5, 2020.
• “Spirytus Rektyfikowany.” This was my first A-Hed for the The Wall Street Journal. It was about a fearsome Polish liquor that became a hot-selling item during the COVID-19 pandemic due to its potency, which comes in handy not just when drinking but also when making home-made hand sanitizer. From The Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2020.
• “I Can Be The Bank.” A decade after the 2008 crisis, we found a new breed of risk-takers in the U.S. housing market: Individual investors who are buying up mortgages on other people’s homes in hope of collecting on sometimes long-forgotten home loans. From The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 20, 2018.
• “The Regrets of Lewis Ranieri.” The father of mortgage-backed securities is one of the few people who has publicly acknowledged his role in the subprime mortgage meltdown of 2008. I wrote a feature about Lewis Ranieri’s regrets for The Wall Street Journal’s financial crisis anniversary edition in Sept. 2018.

The Washington Post:

• “A Golden Ticket.” What does it take to get into the business school of your dreams? I took a look at the lengths some students were going to craft the perfect resume for Wharton, Harvard, Stanford. From The Washington Post, August 13, 2011.
• “Citizen Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt.” While the debt ceiling debate was page one news in 2011, I chronicled some citizens’ feeble attempts to pay it off. From The Washington Post, July 25, 2011.