I'm a veteran journalist and sat on the Los Angeles Times editorial board from 2014-2021. Prior to that I worked freelance and, from 1997-2008 was an LA Times staff writer where, among other assignments, I covered presidential political campaigns. Other previous staff jobs included the Jamestown (N.Y.) Post-Journal, Rochester (N.Y.) Times-Union and The Detroit News.
My journalism has also appeared in the Washington Post, Sierra Magazine, Los Angeles magazine, Orange Coast magazine, New York Times Book Review (books in brief), Buffalo News, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Teaching Tolerance (Southern Poverty Law Center), Solidarity (United Auto Workers) and elsewhere.
A third-generation journalist, I was born in Scarborough, Maine, and grew up there and in Wellsville, New York, about two hours south of Buffalo. My first newspaper job came around age 16, writing a high school sports column for the Wellsville Patriot, a weekly, then covering local news part-time for the Wellsville Daily Reporter. I'm a graduate of the State University College at Fredonia.
I have taught journalism courses at Chapman University and UC Irvine, and speak occasionally at school and college classes about journalism, politics and writing. I've appeared on panels at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and the Literary Orange festival, moderated panels at the Nieman Conference in Narrative Journalism and the North American Labor History Conference, among others, and been featured on C-SPAN's Book TV.