I became the senior editor for coastal news at the Bangor Daily News in October 2023, after previously working as a reporter at the BDN.
I also recently worked as a digital news reporter at Maine Public radio, starting in January 2021.
I often use public records and data to drive my reporting on health care, business, government and other subjects. During the COVID-19 crisis, that has included using state inspection reports to reveal when institutions such as nursing homes, hospitals, jails and restaurants failed to follow basic public health measures — and in one prominent case, when those failures contributed to the state’s largest outbreak.
I have used court filings to break news about the struggles of bankrupt hospitals and a shuttered trash processing plant. Using a probable cause affidavit, I showed that a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent arrested a Guatemalan immigrant using apparent racial profiling, shortly before prosecutors dropped the charge against him.
In 2019, I obtained a state contract that revealed Maine’s former governor had committed the state to paying $11 million over 30 years to lease a new psychiatric facility he originally estimated would cost $3 million, but pursued largely out of public view.
I’ve also written news, feature and watchdog stories for the Kennebec Journal, a daily newspaper in the Maine state capital; the Ellsworth American, a weekly on the coast of Maine; and Seven Days, an alternative weekly in Burlington, Vermont. In the course of my reporting, I also take photo and video.
In 2013, I received a master’s degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. During the 10-month program, I produced print and multimedia stories about the neighborhoods in uptown Manhattan and elsewhere in the city. Two classmates and I reported and wrote a piece on Chinese investment in the Middle East that was published on the Atlantic website.
From 2009 to 2011, I taught English at a small medical college in southwest China as a volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps.
I graduated from Colby College in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in English and a 75-page honors thesis on William Blake.
I tweet about Maine and other miscellany @ceichacker. My last name’s pronounced “Eye-hacker.”