“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.” |

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
- 2019: “The house where our stories live: How storytelling in different mediums can affect scale, audience, and impact”
- 2019: “Promoting transparency and trust in journalism: How the careful use of creative tools can strengthen storytelling”
- 2019: “Thinking in Multiple Frames: How journalism Can Be More Collaborative”