Songwriter Jesse James DeConto is also a veteran journalist. In 2019, he won an Environmental Justice Reporting Award from the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources and published on climate justice with The Nation, Civil Eats and In These Times. In 2020 he started reporting for the start-up news site Cardinal & Pine, part of the Courier Newsroom network. He’s reported on COVID’s impact on the music industry, NC’s first Muslim woman elected to office, and inequities in CARE Act funding.

He worked as a staff writer and editor for newspapers in Ohio, New Hampshire and North Carolina. At The News & Observer in Raleigh, he wrote about immigration, entrepreneurship and environmental justice in green development and waste-facility siting. He narrates quirky characters and nurtures a sense of place, even when covering front-page news.

His freelance reporting has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Reason, E: The Environmental Magazine and dozens of other publications across the U.S. He’s written about agriculture for Fast Company and Paste; economic, racial, environmental and LGBTQ equity and Islamophobia for The Christian Century; consumer debt for The N&O and Prism; and intersectional activism for Religion News Service. As a Park Fellow at UNC-Chapel Hill, he did immersive reporting with the families of death-row inmates.

Contact him at jessejamesdeconto@gmail.com.