Newspapers

Worked as a reporter covering education reform, state and local governments, courts and civil rights in Mississippi for The Clarion-Ledger and the, now-defunct, Jackson Daily News as well as beat reporter at the Laurel Leader-Call, Magee Courier and Meridian Star. Was Managing Editor for the Madison County Journal. Contributing writer for the NY Times and USA Today.

Magazines & more

Contributing features writer and photographer for scores of local and regional magazines including Delta, My South, Mississippi Magazine and Delta Sky. Developed, designed, edited and published five niche magazines. Edited, designed and developed concept for bicentennial history of the state of Mississippi in 2017. Co-author of national professional research journal on Adult Literacy and Workplace Education.

Printer's ink in my blood.

I grew from toddler to pre-teen playing in the back stockroom of my grandmother's weekly newspaper office. That's where I was lulled to sleep on long, hot summer vacation afternoons by the methodical clunking of her Kluge handpress and the incessant clatter of the Linotype machine -- cloistered inside fortresses I'd constructed from corregated cardboard flats of newsprint broadsheets. When the Reformer was finally "put out" late each Wednesday evening, the unexpected and deafening silence of the press and all the other machinery cutting off still remains one of the most jolting and simultaneously calming ear memories I can recall. Each time, my heart would stop just for an instant, before again finding its own rhythm unaided by the external metronome. Lava soap became my daily cleansing ritual, the only known substance able to remove oily black printer's ink (and a few top layers of skin) from my filthy hands, arms, barefeet and legs.

When I grew older, despite my youthful protestations that I would never be a newspaper person but instead an artist, my newfound sanctuary became the Daily Mississippian office at Ole Miss.  The journalism building was rickety, filthy and crowded but the newspaper was my haven and heaven. My journey began at its doorstep.

As an almost adult and a wet-behind-the-ears reporter, I found both my world and my tribe at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson. With notebook and pen in hand, I haunted the metro's courthouses, city halls, police stations, schools and government buildings. I lurked in meeting rooms and schoolhouses. I chased leads and uncovered the bad guys. My life was measured by deadlines, copy length, picas and points. By-lines were gold. Above-the-fold was victory. I was home and happy.

They say...

Reporters feign disregard for awards and recognition. Unless it is the Pulitzer Prize, of course, which my newspaper and our rabidly passionate news staff actually won for our year-long crusade for public education reform in Mississippi. But more of my words also won a stack of little wood and brass engraved plaques from the Associated Press and drew down three Best of Gannett reporting award certificates along the way - one for a bunch of stories about a politician who faked his own death by killing his doppelganger. One afternoon in San Francisco, I shared the main stage with that Microsoft guy when a package of birdcage liners I had written was chosen as the top education reporting done in the country that year.

It must have been a slow news cycle.

Experience