In the Newsroom:

• St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 20 years
• Washington bureau of the Post-Dispatch, 12 of those 20 years
• Radio news and newspapers in North Carolina and Virginia

Out of the Newsroom:

• Ferris Professor of Journalism, Princeton University
• Visiting Professor, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University
• Fellow, Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy; Harvard University
• Director, Semester in Washington/Scripps Howard Foundation Wire
• Head of the journalism/communications program at Hampton University
• Knight Chair in Political Reporting, Newhouse School, Syracuse University

Memorable Assignments:

• "Lives of Faith" — Reconstructing the lives and deaths of five Catholic missionaries killed in Liberia's civil war
• U.S. invasion of Panama
• Democratic National Conventions '84 and '88; Republican National conventions '92 and '96
• Assorted elections and campaigns
• Missouri and Southern Illinois congressional delegations
• Politics and policy of health care — especially the failed Clinton overhaul
• Politics and policy of international trade — especially NAFTA
• Assignments in Nicaragua, Mexico, China and Japan
• The United Nations during first Persian Gulf war

Teaching:

• Political reporting
• The Press & American Democracy
• Feature writing (sometimes)

Lifelines:

• Married to Tom Whitford, writer-turned-artist
• Lived on a boat — the "Freelance" — for more than a decade
• Lived in a Winnebago motorhome for three years
• Remains a chocoholic who also loves mysteries, thrillers and science fiction
• Still passionate about journalism and its role in democracy after all these years: "Journalism is an act of citizenship."

The Knight Chair in Political Reporting was created by an endowment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.