My fascination with journalism began in the first grade when I sold newspapers after school. At age 7, I was one of the youngest newsboys in the state of Florida. I worked at a local radio station during my high school years to gain experience before a microphone, and wrote for the school newspaper.

I studied newswriting and reporting in college but instead of going into newspapers I joined a small television station in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia where I began my career as a television news reporter. In my sparetime, I wrote freelance articles for newspapers, including the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Star, and Washington Blade.

I advanced to progressively larger television markets, including WTTG, Channel 5 in Washington, D.C., and Cable News Network (CNN) where I was a correspondent. During this time, I received awards for writing and producing, and five Emmy nominations.

After leaving television, I worked in public relations at a major Washington trade association and later at the U.S Comptroller of the Currency. At the same time, I began to research and write about journalism history and published Straight News: Gays, Lesbians, and the News Media, the first book to evaluate factors that influenced how the gay and lesbian minority has been depicted in mainstream American news media over the past 50 years. It was favorably reviewed by the Washington Post, American Journalism Review, and the New York Times which named it a "Notable Book of the Year." (Read Reviews)

Through a graduate fellowship from the University of North Carolina, I began to explore journalism history surrounding the McCarthy era. My Ph.D. dissertation, "The Hunt for Red Writers: The Senate Internal Security Committee Investigation of Communists in the Press," received the Nafziger-White-Salwen Award, the most prestigious dissertation award from the top association of mass communication scholars in the nation.

My second book, Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press, published in August 2007, traces how journalists became radicalized during the Depression era, only to become targets of Senator Joseph McCarthy and like-minded anti-Communist crusaders during the 1950s. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gene Roberts described it as "an important, detailed examination of a 1950s journalistic crisis too easily forgotten in today's world." The book is published by Temple University Press. Listen to interviews about the book on Hartford's WNPR The book was named 2008 Best Book of the Year: Adult Non-Fiction by the Connecticut Press Club. The book also received the prestigious Tankard Book Award for outstanding scholarship from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. (Read Reviews)

Sold at fine bookstores and online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Borders.

After earning my Ph.D., I began teaching journalism and communication courses on the faculty of Temple University in Philadelphia. Previously, I taught on the adjunct faculties at American University in Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, Va. Today, I continue my research and writing on press issues during the Cold War, drawing from government and private archives in the United States and Eastern Europe. I teach broadcast newswriting, reporting for broadcast, and journalism history.

A native of Macon, Georgia, I am on the journalism faculty at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT., where I have been recognized for teaching excellence and outstanding research. My current research focuses on journalism during the Cold War, particularly American journalists who got into trouble with Communist authorities.

(Photo left: Prague, Czech Republic, 2008)

Contact: quprof@yahoo.com

Web Site Design: Edward Alwood
Top Photo: Stan Godlewski/North Haven

Copyright © 2009 Edward Alwood. All rights reserved.