Welcome to my adventures in teaching. Once upon a time, I was a practicing journalist. I covered cops, courts, fumbling county commissioners, hunger-striking HIV-positive prison inmates agitating for reasonable living conditions, the infield at the Talladega 500, a legislature, a bunch of state political races, a presidential race and a White House. Along the way there were terrorist attacks in Washington, D.C. and New York City. I guess, after that, I figured I’d covered the story of my life.

Since 2008, I’ve been trying hard to teach undergraduates how to love the news as much as I do. I want them to want to scramble and fight for a great story. I want them to understand that the news connects us all, that is the story of our lives as we are living them.

First, they need to know how to write a lede.

That’s where this site comes in. Here I will recount my adventures, triumphs and, far more often, my mistakes as I do my best to keep journalism alive and well. And, my friends, it is alive and well so long as these great young people, these barely non-teenagers-hardly- adults, decide to turn themselves loose and run after it.