He teaches news reporting, digital and social media, press law and other journalism courses. He writes for WGBHNews.org, the Nieman Journalism Lab, and other publications. He also writes the blog Media Nation. A former media columnist for the Boston Phoenix, the Guardian, and CommonWealth magazine, he is the 2001 recipient of the National Press Club's Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism. His most recent book, The Wired City: Reimagining Journalism and Civic Life in the Post-Newspaper Age (University of Massachusetts, 2013), tells the story of the New Haven Independent, a nonprofit community website in Connecticut that is at the leading edge of reinventing local journalism, as well as several similar projects. From 1979 to 1988, he was a reporter and editor for the Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn, Massachusetts.