My research concerns how journalists contribute to and are influenced by social and political change.

In 1993, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on how journalists at four newspapers in Moscow, Russia, adapted after the fall of the Soviet Union.

My most recent work looks at the history of fatal assaults on journalists in the United States. I have discovered at least 76 journalists were killed because of their work, starting with Thomas Benning, an editor who died to protect the identity of a source in 1829. The manuscript, Deadline: 200 Years of Violence Against Journalists in the United States, is undergoing review.

My first book, the Liberation of Marguerite Harrison, America’s First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent, was published by Naval Institute Press in 2020. This is a biography of  Baltimore Sun reporter Marguerite Harrison who used her journalism credentials as a

cover to spy for the U.S. Military Intelligence Division and the U.S. State Department in the 1920s. During the course of my research, I learned that Harrison was America’s first foreign female intelligence officer, helping pave the way for women who followed, such as CIA director Gina Haspel.

Previously, I wrote about segregationist editor James J. Kilpatrick who became a nationally syndicated columnist and well-known television pundit in the 1970s and 1980s. That work has been the subject of several conference papers and two articles, “Reaching the Pinnacle of the Punditocracy,” published by American Journalism, and “‘Dear Harry,’ “My Dear Jack,'” published by Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.