Michael Shapiro has been a fulltime professor at the Graduate School of Journalism since 1992, having spent the previous 16 years working in newspapers, magazines and starting a book writing career while living for five years in Japan in the 1980s.

A contributor to such magazines as The New Yorker, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Sports Illustrated and Columbia Journalism Review, Shapiro says writing a book is the form that most appeals to him. “Books are the canvas that me to explore ideas that require the space and time no magazine can offer.”

He is the author of five non-fiction books: “Japan: In the Land of the Broken Hearted,” “The Shadow in the Sun,”  “Who Will Teach for America,” “Solomon’s Sword,” and “The Last Good Season.”   He recently published “The Newspaper That Almost Seized the Future,” an article for CJR about how The San Jose Mercury News failed to capitalize on the digital innovation it launched in the Silicon Valley during the 90s before most newspapers even knew what the web was about.

Shapiro earned an M.A. at the University of Missouri.