My story

After 15 years as a reporter and editor – 12 of those for the Ottawa Citizen, the major daily newspaper in Canada’s capital – I left the newspaper business in 2000. Following a year of freelance work and part-time teaching, I decided to pursue a doctorate in communication in the hope of spending the rest of my working life teaching, researching the mass media and otherwise serving the journalism community. 

In 2006, I moved with my husband to Cleveland, Ohio, after seven years of part-time teaching at Carleton University’s respected School of Journalism and Communication in Ottawa. I worked on my dissertation until it was completed in 2009, then was delighted to land my dream job at John Carroll University — a private, Jesuit, liberal arts university with about 3,800 students. I became a tenured faculty member in the Tim Russert Department of Communication. I have taught courses in introductory journalism, mass media, media law, political communication, media literacy, editing & design, health & environmental writing, multimedia reporting, social issues in journalism, communication technology & society, and a linked course on climate change that combined two courses: one in physics (taught by Dr. Carlo DeMarchi and later, Dr. Dinesh Shetty) and one in environmental journalism (taught by myself). In 2018, I took on a new role as faculty adviser to The Carroll News, the student-run campus newspaper, which I very much enjoyed. In 2020, I began a step-down retirement, teaching one fewer course each semester until May 2022, when I retired, returning to Canada over the summer. 

I created this website to share some of the work I have done during my career, both in journalism and in academia. However, most of what I have written I don’t have permission to use: the copyright is owned by the newspaper or academic journal that published it. There are more than 1,500 of my bylined articles in the database that includes all Postmedia newspapers (Canada’s largest newspaper chain, with dailies in many of the country’s major cities), and in other news databases available in many public and university libraries. Only a few of the freelance articles are posted here, plus links to my open-access academic articles. 

For those interested in more detail about my education, job experience, etc., see the tabs for Academic Articles and News & Feature Articles on this site. There is also a good summary of my work, including community service, on my publicly accessible LinkedIn page, and of my academic work on Academia.edu and ResearchGate, as well as ORCID. I regret that some of my publications are not publicly accessible and hope they will be in future, as the open access movement gains full credibility in academia. 

This website is a work in progress. If you have questions, comments or suggestions, please send an e-mail. I welcome feedback.

Carrie Buchanan