From 2015 to 2017, he served as founding chair of the Race Relations Committee of the University of Missouri. With Milbre Burch as his co-director, he oversaw the Storytelling Project of the Cotsen Children’s Library. He earned a mass communications doctorate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he also received a doctoral certificate in folklore. For twenty-five years, including at the Los Angeles Times, he worked as a newspaper and magazine journalist. A media historian, he has been published in journals such as Southern Cultures and Literary Journalism Studies and served as editor-in-chief of Visual Communication Quarterly.