Since 1992, he has worked as a journalist, educator, newsroom trainer and writing coach. He received his Ph.D. from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications in the fall of 2007. Before that, he was education director at the Center for Community Journalism, based at the State University of New York at Oswego. In the past 15 years he has worked with journalists in the United States, South Africa, Norway and Poland and conducted workshops for press associations and at places like the Poynter Institute for Media Studies and the American Press Institute. From 1992 to 2003, he worked for The Daily Messenger, a small daily newspaper in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.