Sarah Lapidus
Sarah Lapidus reports on southern Arizona politics and community issues for The Arizona Republic, focusing on how public policy, transportation and safety shape daily life. Her coverage often follows how decisions made in government, law enforcement and planning play out on the street, especially for people moving through communities by car or on foot.
Southern Arizona politics and community issues
Lapidus covers political and community stories across southern Arizona, tracking how local leaders, agencies and residents respond to ongoing crises and long-running investigations. She has followed the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie through multiple stages, from community conversations on neighborhood social platforms to police searches, the discovery of human remains near Guthrie’s home and updated information from federal investigators. Her reporting in this case blends public-record details with the perspective of faith communities and neighbors, showing how a single investigation tests trust in institutions and shapes daily life in affected neighborhoods. Across her politics and issues coverage she returns to themes of policing, public trust and how communities organize around safety and justice.
Transportation safety and street-level risk
Transportation and street safety are a recurring thread in Lapidus’s work, including recent reporting on Tucson’s high pedestrian death rate and the risks people face moving through the city’s streets. She connects traffic outcomes to infrastructure, enforcement and broader policy debates, treating collisions and fatalities as systemic issues rather than isolated incidents. In covering automated license plate readers and related technologies used on local roads, she examines how tools aimed at improving safety reshape the experience of driving and walking through Arizona communities and how residents weigh those trade-offs. Her treatment of automobile-adjacent topics tends to emphasize human impact, highlighting who bears the greatest risk and how policy might reduce harm.
Surveillance technology and civil liberties
Lapidus reports on the spread of surveillance technology such as Flock cameras, following how cities and neighborhoods debate their use, funding and oversight. She has explained how these systems promise to deter crime and assist investigations while raising questions about privacy, data retention and the monitoring of everyday travel. In this coverage she draws out local fault lines, documenting public meetings and political fights where residents, officials and advocates contest whether expanded monitoring is an acceptable price for perceived safety.
She carries those themes into audio, joining the masthead’s politics podcast to discuss how her reporting on surveillance and public safety fits into wider debates over civil liberties and government power.
Rural and border communities in southern Arizona
Beyond city politics, Lapidus devotes significant attention to rural communities in southern Arizona, including border regions such as Nogales and Yuma. Her beat includes the agriculture economy, cross-border commerce and health care access in small towns, where infrastructure, transportation and public services are often stretched. She writes on how economic shifts, development projects and strained medical systems affect residents’ ability to work, travel and receive care, grounding broader policy issues in specific communities. Earlier in her career she reported in Alaska and covered local politics, policing and housing in San Francisco, as well as international news and culture, experience that informs her approach to complex rural and border stories.
Growth, development and neighborhood change
Lapidus also covers development and redevelopment, such as an upscale project planned for one of Tucson’s oldest neighborhoods. In these pieces she looks at how new construction, investment and planning decisions interact with existing communities, histories and economic realities. Her reporting surfaces questions around who benefits from growth, how projects are financed and what they mean for long-time residents, small businesses and local culture.
Across politics, transportation, surveillance and development, she reports in a straightforward, issue-driven style that keeps the focus on southern Arizona residents and the practical consequences of policy and infrastructure on everyday movement and safety.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aarian Marshall
Aarian Marshall is a staff writer at WIRED who stands out for covering how cars, software, and policy collide. She writes on transportation systems and cities, from the auto industry to broader mobility systems. Before WIRED, she reported on cities and urban policy for The Atlantic’s CityLab. Her beat runs from electric vehicles, fuel prices, tariffs, and car-buying decisions to autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and software-defined cars. She reports with a systems view, linking policy shifts, technical failures, and urban life to what happens on streets, in repair shops, and at the pump.
Abby Smith
Abby Smith’s most distinctive work combines motorsports coverage with live digital and radio reporting. She is Digital Director at KRDO13 and covers the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, including race updates, weather shifts, breaking developments and ways to follow the action. Her beat also includes automotive news, crime, public safety, politics, city government and community life. Notable work includes coverage of homicide arrests, a major drug bust, a presidential address about the war with Iran, a family’s effort to bring Stephen Hubbard home, a state governor candidate and a city security ordinance. She also reports on fitness, school spirit and station staff. Smith writes in a concise, factual style shaped by investigative documentary experience. She turns live events, official announcements and daily developments into clear coverage across digital and radio platforms.
Adele Peters
Adele Peters covers climate solutions and other structural problems as design and policy questions, focusing on what can work in practice. She is a senior writer at Fast Company, where she reports on energy, transportation, housing, materials, agriculture, corporate sustainability, and social impact. Her stories examine climate technologies, grid resilience, electric vehicles, renewable energy, modular construction, homelessness, affordable housing, compostable materials, regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. She looks at whether projects can scale, their real-world constraints, and their measurable effects. She interviews political and philanthropic leaders, startup founders, and climate tech entrepreneurs, anchoring stories in what is being built and tested. She has written more than 3,000 stories and contributed to Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and State of Housing Design 2023.
Adrian Leung
Adrian Leung writes engineering-led coverage of Chinese electric vehicles and performance cars for CarNewsChina. He focuses on new energy vehicles, battery systems, powertrains, electric platforms, high-end domestic brands, and track-ready models, and he explains technical details in plain language for non-specialist readers. His reporting treats new models as hardware and systems stories, with precise figures on range, battery capacity, chassis layout, motor outputs, weight, and acceleration. He also covers the Chinese auto industry’s finances and technology roadmap, including sector profits, vehicle volumes, and solid-state battery timelines. His background in Electrical and Computer Engineering shows in the way he writes about vehicle electronics and battery management.