Dale Maharidge has been teaching at the journalism school since 2001; he first taught here in the early 1990s. He was a visiting professor at Stanford University for ten years and before that he spent fifteen years as a newspaperman, writing for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Sacramento Bee, and others. He’s written for Rolling Stone, George Magazine, The Nation, Mother Jones, The New York Times op-ed page, Smithsonian, Slate, The Guardian, among others.
Most Many of his books are illustrated with the work of photographer Michael Williamson. The first book, "Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass" (1985), later inspired Bruce Springsteen to write two songs; it was reissued in 1996 with an introduction by Springsteen. His second book, "And Their Children After Them" (1989), won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1990. Other books include "Yosemite: A Landscape of Life" (1990); "The Last Great American Hobo" (1993); "The Coming White Minority: California, Multiculturalism & the Nation's Future" (1996, 1999); "Homeland" (2004); "Denison, Iowa: Searching for the Soul of America Through the Secrets of a Midwest Town" (2005); "Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Great Depression” (2011); and “Leapers,” (2012); His most recent book is “Bringing Mulligan Home: The Other Side of the Good War,”(2013); a March 2013 release by PublicAffairs. “Snowden’s Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance”(with Jessica Bruder, 2020); “Fucked at Birth: Recalibrating the American Dream for the 2020s” (2021); and a forthcoming novel, “Burn Coast.” A podcast, “The Dead Drink First,” (2019) reached number one in all categories on Audible for several weeks.
Maharidge attended Cleveland State University. He was a 1988 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University.
Maharidge has held residencies Yaddo and MacDowell artist colonies.