Journalism

“Over the last decade, I’ve seen Sarah use a rigorous journalistic approach—including uncompromisingly ethical reporting and thorough fact checking—to tell compelling stories in new narrative formats. I’m always impressed with her ability to open up complex and opaque issues, both to understand them herself and to translate that insight for audiences.”

- Monika Bauerline, CEO Mother Jones Magazine

Read my Blog: In Real Time

JOURNALISM

2009, “Families Shout Their Love Across Minefields in Golan Heights,”
2012: Daily Beast, “Iranian Lawyer Fasts for Her 13-Year-Old Daughter’s Rights from Prison”
2014: Mother Jones, “How We Survived Two Years of Hell as Hostages in Tehran”
2014: Daily Beast, “Progressive Jail’ Is a 21st-Century Hell, Inmates Complain.”
This article resulted in several organizations investigating this jail’s practices through FOIA.
2015: Daily Beast, “Facebook Now a Place for Prisoners, Too.”
- I partnered with Dave Maas from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on this investigation, which led to Facebook changing its policy around taking down prisoners’ pages upon the warden’s request. Facebook now has an independent process that investigates whether the incarcerated individual has violated its policy. NPR’s All Things Considered did a piece in this investigation.
2015: Daily Beast, “Here’s What the World Will Look Like After Mass Incarceration.”
2015: Daily Beast, “Why the U.S. Won’t Let the U.N. Look Inside Its Prisons”
2015: Daily Beast, California's Secret Solitary Courts
2015: Daily Beast, I Was Jailed as an Ecoterrorist—But I Was Set Up By the FBI
2016: San Francisco Magazine: “Being in Isolation, It Physically Hurts,” Jerry Elster and Sarah Shourd interview each other about their collaboration on The BOX.

OP-EDs PRINT and ONLINE

2011, Daily Beast, https://www.thedailybeast.com/sarah-shourd-one-of-the-three-american-hikers-freed-from-prison-in-iran-sounds-off?ref=scrol
2011: New York Times, “Tortured by Solitude
2013: SF Chronicle, “Imprisoned in Iran for the Greater Good? Really?
2014: Daily Beast, One Former Hostage Says Negotiate with ISIS—and Pay Ransoms If You Must
2015: Reuters, “I was held in Iran for 13 months: This is why I think Jason Rezaian may be freed”
2019: SF Chronicle, “California prisons must end inhumane practice of solitary confinement”
2020: SF Chronicle, “Coronavirus crisis exposes public safety risk of mass incarceration”
2020: SF Chronicle, “Coronavirus pandemic leaves us bound together by our isolation”
2020: SF Chronicle: "California's Incarcerated Firefighters: Fighting for Their Dignity and Our Safety"

ON MEDIUM