I grew up in Detroit, and graduated from the Journalism Institute for Minorities at Wayne State University in Detroit. I worked as a reporter for the Oakland Press, a suburban Detroit daily. I then worked for The Virginian-Pilot as an assistant city editor starting in 1998. I took a job at the Dallas Morning News in 2003 as a Metro editor. I came to Houston in May 2007 to work as the immigration editor. My fiancee is a columnist at the paper. ... I served as an Ethics Fellow at Poynter in 2002 and have taught in the college fellowship program at Poynter.