About.
I grew up in Amish Country, watching plain-clothed farmers bring vegetables to market by horse and buggy. It was an early education in questioning assumptions about how things are supposed to work — and it's shaped everything I've done since.
I’m the author of Slow Media: Why Slow is Satisfying, Sustainable & Smart (Oxford University Press, 2018); the Mandarin-language edition 慢媒體 is forthcoming from One-Way Street in Beijing. The book derives from the Slow Media blog that I wrote for a decade (link).
Slow Media won a Silver Nautilus Book Award and was a finalist for the Marshall McLuhan Book Award from the Media Ecology Association. The book was featured in The New Yorker and Delayed Gratification, reviewed in the Journal of Communication, and named Book of the Week by The Idler.
My research focuses on alternative journalism, news audiences, media literacy, and the cultural impacts of new technologies. In particular, I am an authority on public trust in journalism and deliberate abstention from media use. I am also the author of Resisting the News: Engaged Audiences, Alternative Media & Popular Critique of Journalism (Routledge, 2021) and lead editor of The Routledge Handbook of Alternative & Participatory Journalism (Routledge, forthcoming), co-edited with Stephen Cushion of Cardiff University.
I teach journalism, communication and media studies at Linfield University in beautiful Oregon wine country. I earned my Ph.D. at Indiana University Bloomington. I previously held a faculty position at Long Island University Brooklyn. I have appeared in media outlets and podcasts worldwide, including NPR's Marketplace, Radio National (Australia), La Presse (Montreal), and Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff.
My scholarship has appeared in top-tier journals like Communication, Culture & Critique and Media, Culture & Society. I have been an invited speaker at universities and conferences including the McLuhan Institute at the University of Toronto, Oslo Metropolitan University, the International Journalism Festival in Perugia, and Sapienza Università di Roma.
Before joining the academy, I worked as a reporter, writer, editor, and photographer for news publications and nonprofit organizations. My media roots reach back to my teenage years at WMUH 91.7 FM and an internship with legendary British radio presenter and music promoter Tony Michaelides, whose clients included 4AD, Island, and Factory Records.
I live in Portland with my husband, two cats, and whatever birds come to the garden today.