简介

William McKeen, journalism professor and chairman of the College of Communication Department of Journalism, discusses his experience with teaching. He describes the traits of a good journalist and the relationship between students and faculty at Boston University. McKeen is the author of seven books and the editor of four more, including Mile Marker Zero (Crown, 2011), a non-fiction narrative about Key West; Outlaw Journalist (W.W. Norton, 2008), a biography of Hunter S. Thompson; Highway 61 (W.W. Norton, 2003), a memoir of a 6,000-mile road trip with his teen-age son; and two anthologies, Rock and Roll is Here to Stay (W. W. Norton, 2000) and Literary Journalism: A Reader (Wadsworth, 2000). His most recent book is an anthology of stories about growing up in Florida called Homegrown (University Press of Florida, 2012). In addition to writing two stories in the collection, McKeen gathered contributions from Carl Hiaasen, Michael Connelly, Kristin Harmel, Fabiola Santiago and Tom Petty. Before beginning his teaching career, he worked for several newspapers and magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, The American Spectator, The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Ky.), The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post and The Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times. His writing has appeared in Holiday, American History, Maxim, The Saturday Evening Post and many other newspapers and magazines. He has appeared on “The Today Show,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” “The CBS Evening News” and many other news programs. His major teaching areas are literary journalism, history of journalism, reporting, feature writing and history of rock’n’roll.