Jeff South is an associate professor and director of the Capital News Service program at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he joined the journalism faculty in 1997 under the mistaken impression he’d have summers off. Before moving into academia, he was a newspaper reporter and editor for 20 years in Texas, Arizona and Virginia. As both a journalist and a journalism educator, South has carved out a specialty in using technology to find, report and tell powerful news stories. Over the years, his students have won more than 40 awards for political reporting and other coverage.