Associate Professor in Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Welcome
As a sports journalism researcher, I seek solutions for the challenges hampering sports journalists today. I study how sports journalists do their job, particularly how their routines and practices shape the content they create.​ I use mass communication theories to explore practical problems in sports journalism. This includes challenges associated with sports journalists’ use of social media, hero mythology, and source selection in content creation, as well as role conflict and differences between how American and Russian sports journalists cover athlete doping scandals.
My Background
Most sports journalism students enrolling in my classes come in as sports fans. They have deep social ties with “their” teams, and believe sport to be a meritocracy, free of politics. My goal is to create an environment in which they can become critical thinkers of sports journalists’ culture, routines, and business practices.
I came to Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in 2015, fresh off earning my doctorate at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media as a Park Fellow. I defended my dissertation, Conflicting loyalties: An examination of the role community membership and sports fandom have on sports journalists’ interactions with whistleblowers, under the tutelage of now-Professor Emeritus Daniel Riffe. Prior to that, I earned my master’s degree at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication. During that time, I completed a summer study at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik and my thesis, Print sports journalists’ use of social media and its effect on professionalism, under the direction of advisor (and also now-Professor Emeritus) Kathleen A. Hansen.
Most of my research, if not all, stems directly from industry concerns I either experienced firsthand as a sports journalist, or that sports journalists I knew experienced. I began my career as a sports journalist at the Beaufort Gazette in Beaufort, South Carolina, often discussing local sports on WJWJ-TV Channel 16. I then worked at the Jacksonville Journal-Courier in Jacksonville, Illinois, covering local high school and college sports, and guest hosting on WEAI FM 107.1. I returned to Minnesota to be the sports editor at the now-defunct South Washington County Bulletin in Cottage Grove. During my tenure, the Bulletin won Minnesota Newspaper Association best sports section honors, while I collected honors for sports photography and sports feature stories. I then moved to Brunswick, Maine, where I worked at the Kennebec Journal in Augusta while my husband attended graduate school in Massachusetts. During this time, my husband and I developed a love of camping and hiking, taking trips throughout the Canadian Maritimes, New England, the American and Canadian West, and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail. This love of rugged beauty remains with me today.
I have eclectic tastes. I appreciate a wide array of art, music, literature, and culture. I have an affinity for New England autumns, pumpkin-scented candles, English soaps, fine letter-writing paper, yellow roses, salt water taffy, and the smell of books. I play a lot of Clue and can recite the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz line-by-line by heart. I have faithfully kept a journal since I was 8 years old. Besides my research, I have written about many of these oddities in my blog. I hope you enjoy it.