He received his PhD from the University of Southern California and two MA degrees from the University of California at Los Angeles. He has authored or coauthored four books. He has been a reporter and editor in Los Angeles and Indiana and was an editor for four years in Zimbabwe. In 1991 and 2003, he participated in the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ Institute of Journalism Excellence, which sends selected journalism educators to spend six summer weeks working in a newsroom. He served as an Africa adviser for Freedom of the Press.