Background
I am an award-winning journalist and media historian with more than two decades of experience. I teach news and feature writing and reporting as well as multimedia: photojournalism, audio storytelling and graphic design. Before becoming a professor, I was a newspaper reporter in New York, Boston, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Florida. As a freelancer, I published in the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix, Time Out New York, the New Orleans Gambit, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and other publications. My teaching is driven by a love for storytelling in all its forms, and by years of investigative reporting in crime, environmental issues, poverty, and politics. My colleagues and I help students become dogged explorers who produce stories that engage, raise awareness, and make a difference.
Education
- PhD, Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2013
- MA, Print Journalism, New York University, 1999
- BA, Literature, Sarah Lawrence College, 1992
Specializations
News writing; reporting; media history; literary journalism; digital storytelling.
Research
My research interests are in the history of American media and the Middle East, literary journalism, and media coverage and portrayals of outlaws and rebels. I am fascinated by popular culture, past and present, and am a passionate advocate for environmental causes. My first book, The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist, is a biography of the “Shakespeare of Hollywood” who turned to advocacy in the 1940s, when he broke the American media silence about the Nazi slaughter of Jews. After the war, Hecht became notorious as a militant Zionist, partnering with the Jewish gangster Mickey Cohen to arm the Jews of Palestine. For my second book I’ll be returning to environmental reporting, to tell the stories of people who have put their lives on the line to defend animals.