EXPERIENCE

September 2008 – present

I’m active in three areas. I’m a freelance journalist, with assignments from Sierra magazine, Publishers Weekly, Orange Coast, Hour Detroit, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and others. I also teach journalism at Chapman University in Orange, California, and have taught narrative storytelling in the University of California, Irvine’s Literary Journalism program. And I write history books. My newest, Detroit: A Biography, is due out in April 2012 from Chicago Review Press. Earlier books include the well-received The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial (Rutgers University Press, 2011), a narrative retelling of the 1949 trial of 11 leaders of the American Communist Party, and the critically acclaimed Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (Rutgers, 2007), about a coal strike that dissolved into open guerrilla warfare between strikers and the Colorado National Guard - a war the union men won.

I also have served as a moderator or panelist at the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism in Boston, the Los Angeles Times Festival of books, The Literary Orange fesitval at UC Irvine, the North American Labor History Conference at Wayne State University in Detroit, and other symposia.

January 1997 – September 2008

I played many roles at the Los Angeles Times, focusing mostly on general assignment and political campaign coverage. At the time my job was eliminated, I had spent more than 18 months covering the 2008 presidential campaign. I also covered portions of the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, as well as the 2003 California governor’s recall race, the 2004 U.S. Senate race (Barbara Boxer’s re-election) and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2006 re-election. I also worked in the Calendar section, where I moved among books coverage, culture, travel and movie and pop-music stories, as well as occasional book reviews (which I continue to write). Earlier, I was assigned to the Metro desk, where I covered hundreds of local stories as well as features and projects, post-war Kosovo and a “parachute” piece on California doctors seeking to jump-start the post-Soviet Mongolian medical system. I was routinely called upon to anchor large-scale breaking news stories, wrote for the (now defunct) Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine and worked on investigative projects. And I was a strong presence in the paper’s move to the web, filling in as a blogger on the widely read Top of the Ticket political blog (around 400 blog posts) and posting breaking stories, including as-it-happens debate coverage.

July 1995 – January 1997

While on strike at The Detroit News, I augmented strike pay by freelancing for, among others, The New York Times Book Review (Books in Brief); the Minneapolis Star Tribune; St. Petersburg Times, Buffalo News; Solidarity (a monthly magazine distributed to 1.3 million UAW members), and Teaching Tolerance, published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. I also tended bar and hung drywall.

September 1986 – July 1995

The Detroit News – A week before the strike, I was named book editor of The Detroit News, a Newspaper Guild position. Before that, I was a feature writer and music and book critic after transferring from the city desk in 1991. Stories included the redemption of an imprisoned drug addict, profiles of authors (Pat Conroy, Andrea Barrett, Elie Wiesel and Walter Mosley, among others), and take-outs on such events as riots between Hasidic Jews and African Americans in Crown Heights, N.Y. Also served two stints, totaling a year, as acting book editor, responsible for editing two weekly books pages in addition to writing reviews, essays and profiles. As a city desk reporter from September 1986 to January 1991, I focused on breaking news, street reporting and investigative pieces, including an award-winning package dissecting a single killing in a Detroit crack house. I was also used extensively for rewrite on major breaking stories, including the crash of Northwest Flight 255 at Detroit Metro Airport in which 156 people were killed.

February 1983 – September 1986

Staff writer (general assignment) for the Rochester Times-Union, in Western New York.

December 1979 – February 1983

Staff writer (local government and politics) for the Jamestown Post-Journal, in Western New York.

 BOOKS

Author of The Fear Within: Spies, Commies, and American Democracy on Trial, a narrative retelling of the 1949 Foley Square trial of 11 American Communist Party leaders under the 1940 Smith Act, whose convictions helped pave the way for the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Rutgers again will be the publisher in May 2011.

I'm at work on a book tentatively titled, Detroit: A Biography, which is an attempt to put the current state of the city within a historical context. It likely will be published in Spring 2012.

My first book was the well-received Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West (Rutgers; 2007), which delves into the little-noted 1913-14 coal field war in southern Colorado in which more than 75 people were killed. With the Colorado National Guard on one side and a ragtag army of union supporters on the other, this was the closest the nation has come to open warfare between the classes, and it took the intervention of the U.S. Army to bring the violence to an end. The book received strong critical praise in such disparate outlets as The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Kansas City Star and Dissent.

TEACHING

Currently an instructor at Chapman University in Orange, teaching journalism theory and practices. Began in August 2008. In the Summer of 2009 led a nonfiction storytelling workshop at UC Irvine.

 MISCELLANEOUS

Recent talks and panels include the 2010 North American Labor History Conference; the 2008-2010 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books; the 2009 Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism; Cal State Long Beach’s April 2008 Media Day, and opening night speaker at the fifth annual Ludlow Memorial Labor Festival at Colorado State University-Pueblo, also in April 2008. Served as consultant (March 2007) in planning new journalism major at Fredonia.

Received numerous awards for journalism (mostly local and regional), including a second-place recognition from the Sunday Magazine Editors Association in 1999, several citations from the Orange County Press Club, and a 1989 Unity Award in Media.

PERSONAL

Born in Scarborough, Maine, but moved with family to Wellsville, N.Y., as a child and grew up there, about two hours south of Buffalo. Interests include literature, music, history, travel, soccer and cooking. Married to Margaret, an elementary school teacher, and we have two sons, ages 20 and 17.