A 20-year tour of hope and disaster

Even after 20 years in the news business, sometimes I think I haven't had a very interesting life. Then I remember the fires, floods, plane crashes and murders, and I realize that I don't have much in common with the neighbors.

The career has always required sacrifice. In the spring of 1987, after I finished a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, I packed up a rusted-out Ford and headed for a three-month internship in California.

I was 21 then, but I had been on my own since I was 17, and I had spent years fighting to find a way to pay for an education. When I got to the Golden State, I had very little money and no place to live.

Like most reporters of my generation, I started near the bottom of the business. In those early years, after rent and student loan payments, I had less than $1.50 a day left over for food.

But the stories made the sacrifices worthwhile, and in 1997, I started writing a column for The New York Times on the Web. That column evolved into day-to-day coverage of the development of the Internet as a force in politics.

These days, I'm working as a freelance writer, and it's fair to say that I'm always looking for work. I have experience in several areas:

• Writing
• Editing
• Computer mapping
• Managing large-scale news projects
• Analyzing crime data, campaign data and school statistics
• Training journalists how to analyze data and statistics

I teach news writing and computer-assisted reporting under contract for the Annenberg School at the University of Southern California, and I have helped write curricula for those classes. In recent years, I have worked as a contributing editor for Interactive Week, and I have written for several publications, including The New York Times newspaper, Red Herring magazine, Writer's Digest and The Atlantic online.

And I'm still looking for that next great story.